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JOURNEYING ROUND THE WORLD 



Journeying Round the World 



A Narrative of Personal experience 




by 
SYDNEY FORDV 



GRAFTON PUBLISHING COMPANY 
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 



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Copyright 1912 
by 

HENRIETTA B. FREEMAN 

(Sydney Ford) 

.Los Angeles, Cal. 

TJ. S. A. 



All Rights Reserved 



feXI.A319984 



CONTENTS 
SUBJECT PAGE 

Travelers, and Traveling Togs 9 

Some Seasonable Specifics 22 

Honolulu, the Happy Haven 29 

In Mid-ocean 44 

Land of the 'Riksha 49 

Shanghai, the Paris of the Pacific 66 

Up the Yangtze 70 

Sailing Toward the Equator 75 

Ceylon's Spicy Breezes 82 

The Red Sea 88 

Cairo, City of Mosques, Minarets and 

Mosquitoes 93 

The Pyramids of the Pharoahs 102 

The Port of Palestine 107 

Jerusalem and Jericho 118 

Europe, the World's Playground 123 

Money, the World Around 137 

Tips and Tipping 143 

Foreign Pood 152 

Types of Travelers 159 

Homeward Bound 168 



FOREWORD 

I have made no attempt in these pages 
to give an exhaustive account of a tour 
around the world, but merely to present 
some features of the trip, and to offer some 
suggestions that may be of value to others 
who are about to embark on a similar 
"swing around the circle." 

THE AUTHOR 



_ 



Travelers and Traveling Togs. 



>> 



"Come, go 'round the world with us, 
urged a voice over the telephone one rainy 
evening in February. 

" Certainly, " I called back without hesi- 
tation. "When do we sail — tomorrow 
morning?" 

I had about as much notion of going as 
you have of crossing the Pacific in an aero- 
plane this minute, but such is the versatility 
of human affairs and the variableness of the 
average woman's mind that, four weeks 
from that very night I found myself on 
board ship, bound on a tour the big world 
around. 

Of course the intervening weeks had been 
full of the excitement of preparation. 

" You 're entitled to three hundred pounds 
of baggage apiece," observed the steamship 
agent encouragingly. "Take along all the 
trunks you want." 

"Oh, happy day!" exclaimed Peggy; "no 
excess baggage — how perfectly glorious." 

Sounds well, doesn't it? But oh, my 
friends, beware the voice of the tempter, for 



10 Journeying Round the World. 

once you get in foreign lands, believe me, 
there's trouble ahead, and plenty of it, for 
the unwary traveler who indulges in ward- 
robe trunks, hat boxes, five-pound illus- 
trated guide-books, cut-glass-silver-topped 
out-fitted suit cases, and all the luggage lux- 
uries that may be safely included in a 300- 
pound limit. 

Over there baggage has a way of making 
itself a perfect nuisance. They don't have 
our American checking system whereby you 
simply produce a pasteboard slip and claim 
your baggage, or make it hot for the rail- 
road officials. On the contrary, you cannot 
check your trunks at all, but have to pay 
their fares instead, and watch over them as 
carefully and tenderly as if they were your 
precious, helpless children. Indeed, I never 
in my life beheld such utterly helpless 
trunks as those I encountered in Europe. 
You have to see that they are properly 
weighed and then pay their fares at so much 
per pound; then you have to see that they 
are loaded on a truck, and tip the man who 
does it, and watch that they are put on the 
same train as yourself, and you have to crane 
your neck out the car window at interven- 
ing stations, to see that your trunk does not 



Travelers, and Traveling Togs 1 1 

get off, and when you reach your destina- 
tion, you must see that your trunk disem- 
barks too. And the more trunks you have, 
the more you have to watch — and pay fares 
for. So be a bit chary about baggage. 

I remember that Peggy insisted on taking 
her trunk up to Cairo from Port Said in- 
stead of storing it there with the rest of our 
big baggage while we ran up to look at the 
Pyramids, the mosques and the minarets for 
a few days before embarking for Palestine. 
The railroad fare for that trunk was exactly 
one-half of Peggy's personal fare. 

Fancy an inanimate trunk costing as 
much as a human child to transport! But 
such was the mournful fact, and Peggy dis- 
puted with the Arab official in vain. Not a 
single piastre less ! In Germany, Italy and 
Switzerland you must pay for every pound 
of baggage you check; in England you are 
allowed one hundred and fifty pounds, on 
first class ticket; in France and Spain sixty- 
six pounds; in Russia thirty-six pounds, and 
in other European countries fifty-five 
pounds on through routes. If you wish to 
stop off, as most tourists do in passing 
through these countries, then you are al- 
lowed no extra baggage. 



12 Journeying Round the World 

On the contrary you may carry all the 
hand baggage you like as the allowance in 
this particular is practically limitless, each 
railway train being amply provided with 
huge racks for holding it, and porters can be 
obtained anywhere and everywhere who will 
tote bags, suit cases, and sachels for a fee 
of three cents in U. S. money for each piece 
of baggage. 

Therefore, do not wax too enthusiastic 
over the gay and glimmering prospect held 
out so alluringly by the steamship agent. 
Rather calculate carefully the garments you 
must have in order to be comfortable, and 
then pack compactly in as small a space as 
possible. The 36-inch steamer trunk is by 
all means most desirable. It's surprising 
how much difference a few inches makes. 
One of our party came to grief early in our 
preparations and was compelled to purchase 
a second trunk because a 30-inch trunk was 
selected in the first place. You'll be aston- 
ished when you come to pack to find how 
you miss those extra six inches. 

The advantage of a yard-long trunk is that 
your skirts and dresses will lie almost at full 
length which does away with the extra thick- 
ness of doubling over, and makes a lot of dif- 



Travelers, and Traveling Togs 1 3 

ference in the amount you can stow away in 
the trunk. Peggy had what she called a 
" dress rehearsal" a day or two before we left 
home, and actually accomplished the feat of 
packing away in her 36-inch trunk, eight 
gowns, her long pongee coat, sweater, shoes 
and slippers and six shirt waists — not to 
mention a lot of little things. Jack asked 
her why she didn't include an aeroplane, 
electric car and steamer rug. 

Don't commit the error either of getting 
a trunk too long to fit under the berth in 
your cabin. I shared a state-room during a 
part of our journey with such an one and the 
protruding end of that abominable trunk — it 
had to be shoved under sideways — was re- 
sponsible for more bruised shins, lacerated 
feelings and inarticulate profanity than I 
would like to record. 

For the month before my departure, every 
mail brought letters containing timely hints 
for comfort and convenience on the voyage, 
and three months after my departure, when 
I was in Rome, a package of twenty-five let- 
ters was forwarded to me which had accu- 
mulated since I left home. All of these, with 
the exception of two or three personal let- 
ters, were advertisements from hotels all 



14 Journeying Round the World 

over the country, recipes for sea-sick speci- 
fics, etc. 

"Shan't we send you some face cream and 
wonder salve, put up in collapsible tubes es- 
pecially for traveling 1 ?" wrote one enterpris- 
ing firm. 

"I am forwarding you some tooth paste in 
tubes" caroled another. 

"You will need a hot water bag," advised 
a third, "best preventive for seasickness — 
can't get 'em abroad." 

"Be sure and get one of those nail buffers 
with a removable top — the kind that has all 
the manicure tools inside" counseled 
another. 

Some one told Peggy to take along a big 
bottle of Worcestershire sauce to ward off 
seasickness, and the poor child did. That 
bottle of perfectly good sauce found a 
watery grave in the bottom of the ocean 
when we were two days out of San Fran- 
cisco. Peggy flung it through the port-hole. 

"Be sure and take a stunning evening 
gown," advised a friend who had made the 
round-the-world journey ahead of me. 
"You'll regret it if you don't. Take the one 
you have on." 

It was at a reception — a fashionable func- 



Travelers, and Traveling Togs 1 5 

tion — that this conversation took place just 
previous to my departure, and I had donned 
my very best for the occasion. Unfortunate- 
ly, I followed the advice of my well-meaning 
friend and took along my French crepe 
gown, with its train, its silver net trimmings 
and chiffon sleeves. 

I wore it three times — once at the cap- 
tain's dinner the night before we reached 
Japan; once in Yokohama, the night the Im- 
perial Military Guards band came down 
from Tokyo and played during dinner at our 
hotel; and once somewhere down in the In- 
dian Ocean — I forget just where — but it 
was at a ball on shipboard, and the tempera- 
ture was like unto that of the equator which 
we were fast approaching. 

That gown? Well, you should see it — I 
preserve it as a picturesque ruin and an aw- 
ful warning. The salt, sea air, the equato- 
rial heat and humidity, the Straits Settle- 
ment atmosphere and the Ceylon sun didn't 
do a thing but change its color from a pale, 
shimmering blue, to a pensive gray. It is 
beautifully flecked all over with spots in a 
queer shade of pink — souvenirs of the salt, 
sea spray. The silver lace has turned to a 
dull, oxidized tint, and the soft crepe and 



16 Journeying Round the World 

chiffon is a hopeless mass of wrinkles. In 
short, it's — oh well, what's the use? 

I want to quote one other awful example, 
and that is the woman who went to the other 
extreme and thought her last year's second 
best tailor gown, a cheap sweater, an old 
rain-coat, and her year-before-last hat 
plenty good enough for ship wear. Her tail- 
ored gown showed the faded cotton thread 
it was stitched with, her sweater was of the 
$1.98 type — and it looked it — her rain-coat 
was miles too big for her and had holes in 
it when she started, her dinner gown was an 
old summer silk so frayed and worn that she 
could scarcely be hooked into it — and her 
hat! It was a sight, with its faded straw, 
its rusty black velvet and soiled white wing. 
She took along an old blanket shawl for a 
steamer rug, and the lining of her lace 
blouse was in rags. She was wearing out her 
old clothes — and everybody knew it, for the 
pitiless white glare on deck called loud at- 
tention to each discrepancy. 

No, don't be foolish, but pack away your 
best evening gowns in tissue paper and leave 
them at home. Get yourself a little silk or 
voile gown, simply but smartly made, of a 
material that will not muss, crush or wrinkle 



Travelers, and Traveling Togs 1 7 

easily — the sort that shakes out and bobs 
back into slickness and smoothness the min- 
ute you take it out of your suit case or 
steamer trunk. A woman whom I met on 
the Atlantic liner on which I made my pas- 
sage from Liverpool to New York, and who 
had crossed the ocean many times, told me 
that the most satisfactory material she had 
found for a dinner or evening gown in trav- 
eling was crepe de chine, of a quality of suf- 
ficient body to shake itself free of wrinkles. 

Then take along one or two pretty silk or 
net waists, to wear with that black silk skirt 
that every woman has hanging in her closet. 
In addition to these, a smart and perfectly 
fitting tailor-made suit and a trotteur skirt 
of shantung or brilliantine or some material 
that sheds the dust. These are all the 
dresses you need, and with these four and no 
more, you may journey the world around 
and arrive in that Paris of the Orient. 
Shanghai; in Hongkong, in Cairo, in Jerusa- 
lem, in Rome, in Paris or in London, feeling 
that you are well clad and equal to any emer- 
gency — except perhaps a presentation at 
court, in which case you can patronize the 
Parisian or London shops — you will anyhow, 



18 Journeying Round the World 

for you'll want to replenish your wardrobe 
a bit by the time you get there. 

As to shirt waists, follow the advice of 
Lillian Bell and leave your dainty pink-and- 
blue, made-to-order linen waists at home and 
take plain pongee or silk waists that do not 
have to be laundered. You can cover the 
holes with medallions as fast as they appear. 
In this way your plain silk blouses will be 
elaborate evening bodices by the time you 
get back and you'll have to be a bit careful 
not to strain them when you reach up to 
turn on the electric lights. 

Be extravagant in shoes. Take along at 
least four pairs, for the Oriental, English 
and French shoes are not made to fit Amer- 
ican feet, and you must therefore provide 
yourself with enough to last the journey 
through. Then you will need a long, rather 
loose-fitting motor coat — thick and warm — 
large enough to wear a sweater underneath. 
Don't smile! You'll need it, for you've no 
idea how chilly it gets on deck when the sea 
breezes blow, and the best possible safe- 
guard against seasickness is to keep warm 
and comfortable. 

Make yourself the prettiest deck bonnet 
you can conjure up. Use a chiffon motor 



Travelers, and Traveling Togs 19 

veil and shir it softly over a wire frame, 
hood-fashion — and leave the long scarf ends 
to float in the breeze. The prettiest deck 
hood I saw the world around was worn by 
a San Francisco girl en route to the Philip- 
pines. It was a pale blue chiffon veil cun- 
ningly shirred into a charming bonnet, and 
a wreath of tiny pink rosebuds nestled de- 
murely under the shallow poke brim. 

Do not burden yourself with stationery or 
a writing portfolio — all such materials are 
supplied in abundance by the steamship 
company in the writing rooms. If possible, 
pack all the things you will need for the 
ocean trip in your suit case and traveling 
bag, and send your steamer trunk down into 
the hold. It takes up room in your cabin, 
even if it is shoved under the berth, and be- 
sides, you need that space for your hand bag- 
gage. Carry your steamer rug, motor coat, 
sweater and extra wraps in a hand strap or 
English " hold-all," and this last is the most 
practical and accommodating piece of bag- 
gage I have ever found. It has ample pock- 
ets inside where you can pack shoes and all 
the bulky things that take up so much room 
in a trunk. The hold-all is rightly named, 
for it has the most surprising capacity for 



20 Journeying Round the World 

expansion. Into its capacious maw can go 
all the innumerable things that bear bang- 
ing and you can bulge it out to the size of 
an ordinary steamer trunk. 

Be sure to put inside your steamer rug a 
little soft, down pillow. You've no idea 
what a comfort it is to slip behind your head, 
or tuck under your neck when you lie in your 
steamer chair on deck. 

Take along some light literature if you 
like to read, or some fresh and breezy little 
books of travel. All the steamships have li- 
braries well stocked with standard fiction, 
biography and travel books, but not of the 
latest vintage. Usually the passengers are 
permitted the free use of the library. Some- 
times a small fee is required, and you may 
be asked to put up a deposit as a guaranty 
of safe return of books. 

When you get down in the Indian Ocean 
and haven't seen an English newspaper for 
weeks, and are wondering what on earth 
may have happened at home, you've no idea 
how you'll grab Reuter's telegrams when 
brought on board at Penang or Ceylon. 
They look like galley proofs and contain tel- 
egraphic briefs of the latest news. You can 
buy a bunch for a shilling, covering several 







Travelers, and Traveling Togs 21 

days back, and you'll jump at the chance 
just to see what's happened since you left 
land. I distinctly recollect when we 
reached this point in our journey, and had 
been sailing for two weeks, that our stock 
of American news consisted of exactly two 
items — the death of Mark Twain, which we 
had read in a Shanghai paper, and the fact 
that Roosevelt had refused an audience with 
the Pope, which caught us somewhere in 
mid-ocean by wireless I believe. 



Some Seasonable Specifics. 

Of the three trans-Pacific lines, we chose 
the southernmost for two reasons: First, 
because we sailed in mid-March, and we 
wished to court the soft southern breezes 
rather than the wilder winds and waves of 
the north, and, second, because we wanted 
to catch a glimpse of TJncle Sam's string of 
islands away out two thousand miles in mid- 
ocean and pay our respects to Honolulu — 
the Pearl of the Pacific. 

After events proved the wisdom of our 
decision, for a party of thirty Los Angeles 
people who sailed from Seattle a few days 
later, skirting the Aleutian Islands, encoun- 
tered rain, hail, snow, blustering winds and 
mountain billows nearly all the way across, 
sailing into Yokohama fifteen days later 
with every inch of canvas spread, an eight- 
een-inch hole in the bottom of the ship, and 
half her rudder gone. Most of the passen- 
gers sang one song all the way over, and that 
was, "When the Breezes Blow I Go Below." 

The straight across route from San Fran- 
cisco to Yokohama is the most direct — also 

22 



Some Seasonable Specifics 23 

the most void of sight-seeing, if you except 
porpoises, and an occasional shark, or whale, 
or other deep-sea monster — a route absolute- 
ly devoid of thrills — an excellent route for 
freight steamers. 

Our way lay over sunny seas and through 
tropical temperature after we had left be- 
hind the "moaning at the bar" of San Fran- 
cisco, and our stop at Honolulu of twenty- 
four hours was one of the most delightful ex- 
periences of the entire trip. Owing to the 
fact that we sailed out of San Francisco har- 
bor with practically empty holds, our pas- 
sage was less steady than it would have been 
under ordinary conditions. A tremendous 
storm that interfered with railroad traffic 
had held back the cargo of freight destined 
for our ship, hence, instead of acting as bal- 
last for us in the yawning depths below 
decks, it was marooned somewhere up in the 
Rocky mountains or out on the Mojave 
desert. 

It therefore happened that, soon after 
crossing the bar from San Francisco, the 
decks became suddenly and suspiciously de- 
serted, and that night at dinner, the dining- 
saloon, which is the pulse of the passenger 
list, had far more vacant than occupied 



24 Journeying Round the World 

seats. Many of the passengers, for reasons 
best known to themselves, had sought the 
seclusion of their cabins, there to remain in- 
definitely, for a longer or shorter period, ac- 
cording to their ability as sailors. 

This secluding yourself in your cabin is a 
mistake, for there is no better antidote for 
seasickness than a stiff sea breeze. Your 
best salvation therefore, is to stick to your 
steamer chair on deck to the last gasp, and 
avoid the closeness of the cabin as you 
would a pestilence. However, one appreci- 
ates the feeling of delicate reserve that ac- 
tuates most victims for if, in all your experi- 
ence, there are moments when you wish to 
be alone, surely one of them is when you 
are suffering the pangs of seasickness. 

"New things are continually coming up," 
as one of our party facetiously observed, 
and that's altogether the wisest plan — let 
'em come up. 

"Just yap it up, sonny," was the sage ad- 
vice given by a mother to her offspring as 
he lay gritting his teeth with a look of grim 
determination on his yellow cast of coun- 
tenance. 

If there's any known specific for seasick- 
ness, I've never found it. A doctor told me 



Some Seasonable Specifics 25 

a funny story of a brother physician who 
wrote him on board an Atlantic liner as she 
was nearing port on the other side. 

"Old fellow," he wrote; "I've discovered 
the most wonderful remedy for seasickness 
you ever saw. Perfectly marvelous — settles 
the stomach in no time — regulates digestion 
in the most miraculous manner — it's a posi- 
tive specific. I have a package with me that 
I got in New York just before sailing, and if 
my stomach ever gets settled enough so I 
can take a dose I know I'll feel better. We 
are due in Liverpool tomorrow morning, 
thank God." 

Perhaps it is not until the stewardess 
ducks her head inside your cabin door and 
threatens you with a concoction of raw eggs 
and Worcestershire sauce that you consent 
in self defense to leave your state room and 
go on deck. There you lie, very limp, very 
miserable, and wholly wretched in your 
steamer chair, your listless eyes fixed on the 
distant horizon where the boundless sea 
meets the sky, and your unhappy mind 
dwelling on the utter impossibility of ever 
reaching shore alive. 

You wonder, weakly and vaguely, how on 
earth you were ever persuaded to leave your 



26 Journeying Round the World 

happy home and undertake a tour around 
the world, and when you reflect that nearly 
all of the journey must be by water, your 
very soul grows sick and faint with appre- 
hension. You speculate on the bare possi- 
bility of reaching Honolulu alive, and shud- 
der at the thought of being buried at sea. 
It doesn't seem possible that you can sur- 
vive many days at this rate. 

Gradually, you begin to take a little no- 
tice of your fellow passengers, and you feel 
impatient with the thoughtless girl who can 
laugh. You are sure you will never smile 
again. In fact, you have lost your sense 
of humor completely — and is there a sadder 
spectacle in all the world than the man or 
woman who has no sense of humor which, 
the poet says, "rainbows the tears of the 
world?" 

All this is a very solemn experience, but 
cheer up mate, it's not at all alarming. You 
are merely getting your sea legs, in the lan- 
guage of the old salt. In three or four days 
at the outside, you have literally buried your 
seasickness, and are promenading the deck 
with the regulation steamer stride. This 
particular gait by the way, is in a distinct 
class by itself. As you have lain in your 



Some Seasonable Specifics 27 

steamer chair during the days of your con- 
valescence and lazily watched the passing 
promenade rs you have wondered why on 
earth every one goes galloping along, head 
pitched well forward, as if breasting a head 
wind, and walking as though they were rac- 
ing to make a train. When you try it your- 
self you understand. It's merely balancing 
the body against the motion of the steamer 
— getting your sea legs. You fill your lungs 
with the good, salt sea air; you take an ac- 
tive interest in the deck games, and join the 
tournament in the egg or potato race for 
honors. Your appetite returns ten-fold, and 
you feel quite equal to the numerous meals 
served on ship-board, beginning with coffee 
and fruit in 3^our cabin at 7, breakfast at 8, 
hot broth and biscuits on deck at 11, lunch 
at 12:30, tea, sandwiches and cake at 4, din- 
ner at 7 :30 and a light lunch for a night-cap 
at 10:30. 

As you sail toward the Hawaiian Islands 
you will notice how intensely blue the ocean 
is. You first observe this when you are a 
day or two out from the islands and, as you 
sail nearer and nearer, the waters turn 
bluer and bluer till they are about the same 
indigo tint as those of the famous Blue Grot- 



28 Journeying Round the World 

to on the island of Capri, which you will 
visit during your stay in Naples later on 
in your journey. 



Honolulu, the Happy Haven. 

"Looks just like Catalina," we Calif or- 
nians chorused as the Hawaiian Heights 
loomed up out of the sea. It was 10 o 'clock 
in the morning on our seventh day out from 
San Francisco, and at the first cry of "land," 
the big ship became a human bee-hive. Spy 
glasses were brought into play and, as the 
rugged heights of Oahu were magnified, and 
trees and tropical growth assumed shape 
and form, standing room at the rail of the 
promenade decks was at a premium. 

After the first excitement, passengers be- 
gan disappearing into their state rooms and, 
after a brief period, reappeared in so resur- 
rected a form that it required two squints 
through the spy glasses to recognize some of 
our fellow passengers with whom we had 
been hobnobbing for the past week. Like 
gay birds of Paradise, they fluttered out in 
raiment so stunning, in hats so large, 
in gowns so white and ribbons so 
bright that it was a regular transforma- 
tion scene. Duck and pongee suits pre- 
vailed among the sterner sex, and umbrellas 

29 



30 Journeying Round the World 

to shelter flower hats and chiffon shades 
from the celebrated sun-showers of Hono- 
lulu were much in evidence. 

The ship plowed through the waters, past 
Diamond Head, and swept toward the har- 
bor of Honolulu, a mile or so away. We all 
made ready to disembark with all possible 
speed for it looked as if we would shortly 
step foot on shore. 

But right here we received our first les- 
son in patience. A missionary on board, on 
her return voyage to Japan, had told me that 
the most vulgar thing one can do in the 
Orient is to show haste. It was at Honolulu 
that we had our first check to our perfectly 
natural, inborn American haste. 

Reminds one of the story of a distin- 
guished party of Japanese who were visiting 
New York and were transferred from one 
subway train to another, when both were 
going in the same direction. 

"Why did we do that?" one of the guests 
inquired of an American friend. 

"Why," explained the American eagerly, 
"we gained two minutes by the transfer." 

"Yes, yes," replied the Japanese, "we 
gained two minutes, but what for?" 

However, if you think for a minute that 



_ 



Honolulu, the Happy Haven 31 

a big ocean liner can run up alongside the 
wharf at any port she happens to come to 
and discharge her passengers and freight 
with as little ceremony as any lake or river 
steamer, there 's where you are woefully mis- 
taken. There 's a deal of form about it, I as- 
sure you, and yards and yards of red tape to 
unwind. After we were gloved and hatted, 
and had firmly grasped our umbrellas to 
combat the "liquid sunshine" we had heard 
so much about, we suddenly observed that 
our ship had slowed down and was leisurely 
treading water as if waiting for something. 

A little shallop shot out from shore and 
came rocking over the waves toward us. She 
danced like an egg-shell on the rippling blue, 
curvetting gracefully around the stern of 
our ship and brought up on the port side. 
A thin, wiry, gray-haired man, with keen 
blue eyes and wearing government uniform, 
came on board. 

"Inspection officer," some one murmured. 
Then the big gong sounded, summoning all 
the passengers to the dining saloon and we 
marched down like a flock of sheep and 
ranged ourselves in rows on either side the 
long tables. We sat there is hushed and 
solemn silence, until the wait seemed inter- 



32 Journeying Round the World 

minable and some one ventured a joke at the 
expense of Uncle Sam. That relieved the 
strained tension and we chatted and chaffed 
while the inspection officer was going 
through his work in the steerage and sec- 
ond cabin. 

Peggy had grown a trifle nervous with all 
this serious ceremony and tedious waiting, 
and she turned pale and grasped the table 
for support when our official jollier gravely 
told her that each passenger would be called 
out separately by name, and would be com- 
pelled to go forward and stand under an im- 
mense headlight which would be stationed 
at the main stairway before the open en- 
trance to the dining saloon, where she must 
display her tongue for inspection to the 
health officer, and permit her pulse to be 
counted before she would be given a clean 
bill of health and allowed to land. 

This is what really happened. The 
inspector simply walked rapidly down 
the line, giving each passenger a keen, 
penetrating glance as he passed. There 
was a howl of glee went up when 
he paused before a young college athlete, 
who, in taking a high dive a few days 
before, had struck the bottom of the bathing 



Honolulu, the Happy Haven 33 

pool which had been rigged up on deck, and 
whose face bore the marks of his reckless 
plunge. His explanation, and the surgeon's 
affidavit that the picturesque map on his 
countenance, done in bright scarlet, was the 
result of a too harsh contact with the can- 
vas bottom of the bathing pool satisfied the 
officer that he would be running no risk of 
admitting a measles or scarlet fever patient 
on shore. After his first round, the inspect- 
ing officer made a second, counting us all, to 
see if the number corresponded with that of 
the passenger list. 

After that we had to wait for another 
steamer to pull out from the wharf and then 
our pilot boat had to dash after her with our 
mail destined for San Francisco, so that al- 
together, it was fully two o'clock before we 
finally came up alongside the wharf. 

Our guide, philosopher and friend at Hon- 
olulu was a California girl who was spend- 
ing a year in this Paradise of the Pacific, and 
she proved herself past mistress in the art 
of showing the beauties of the place. She 
had engaged a seven-passenger touring car 
for us and, without a moment's delay, we 
bundled into it and away we sped. 

Out over the smoothly macadamized roads 



34 Journeying Round the World 

we whirled to Hawaii's historic peak, Pali, 
the auto climbing curve after curve till we 
landed on the heights, two thousand feet 
above the level of the sea whence we had 
come. At our feet lay the harbor of Hono- 
lulu, and between a panoramic view of tropi- 
cal splendor, tempered and softened by the 
mist-like showers of " liquid sunshine," and 
the shadows of the clouds which seem to for- 
ever hover over Honolulu — so thin and 
transparent that the blue of the sky, and the 
shine of the sun is always breaking through. 

On our return down this splendid moun- 
tain road we halted for a few minutes at the 
Country Club situated on a mesa command- 
ing a view of the harbor and the sea. Be- 
fore it stretches the smooth, velvet lawn of 
the golf links, its bunkers marked by hedges 
of brilliant begonias. 

It is this riotous, tropical growth of Hon- 
olulu that most impresses you. The sweet, 
moist smell of spring is everywhere, and na- 
ture is forever having her face washed — 
sometimes a mere mist of a sprinkle, and 
again a smart shower as if a big bucket of 
water had suddenly been thrown out of 
Celestial windows just as one might toss a 
pail of water out the back door. 



Honolulu, the Happy Haven 35 

It rained every seven minutes and a half 
by my watch while we were there — not 
heavy soaking showers, but a soft-falling 
mist shot through with sunbeams. 

" Seems as if the soul of the sky was laugh- 
ing and it brings tears to its eyes," quoted 
Peggy in her soft, southern accents. 

The lawn mowers in Honolulu, you will 
observe, are run by horse power. You see 
a big mower, built on the same plan as our 
hand-run affairs, hitched to a horse that is 
patiently plodding over the lawn, driven by 
a native. 

" Grass gets long enough to braid and tie 
up with ribbons in a week here if you don't 
give it a hair-cut," observed the chauffeur as 
we shot past a lovely hybiscus hedge over 
which tall oleander trees, heavy with their 
beauteous bloom of pink or white, nodded to 
us in friendly fashion. Most brilliant of all 
are the bourganvilleas which cover whole 
arbors and climb roof-high. Some of these 
are the same deep magenta of our Califor- 
nia bourganvilleas and others are a bril- 
liant flame-color. One of the prettiest sights 
I saw in Honolulu was a lovely girl, gowned 
in white, reaching up for a spray of bloom 
from an arbor literally smothered in these 



36 Journeying Round the World 

gay, red flowers. Her white dress against 
the vivid scarlet background, her uncon- 
sciously graceful pose was a challenge for an 
artist's eye. 

And speaking of girls, Honolulu is the 
Paradise of the summer girl for she has 
twelve brilliant moons in the year in which 
to do business. Next to the "liquid sun- 
shine/' the misty moonlight of Honolulu is 
most famous. Its silvery rays fall on the 
just and the unjust, the romantic and pro- 
saic. Naturally then, an architectural fea- 
ture of every pretentious home in Honolulu 
is the balcony — from which to view the 
moon of course. 

Our hostess told us that there had been a 
complaint among the American girls there, 
however, that there was too much balcony 
and too little Romeo in Honolulu, which 
seems a shame when the stage settings are 
so perfect, and is a direct challenge for some 
of Uncle Sam's Romeos to wend their way 
hitherward. 

The summer girl, like the moon, is an all- 
the-year-round product in Honolulu, too. 

"We wear white dresses and summer 
gowns the year through," said our girlish 



Honolulu, the Happy Haven 37 

guide. "I haven't paid out but $15 for 
clothes since I came here last June. ' ' 

This remark created a distinct sensation 
among the feminine portion of our party, 
and paterfamilias pricked up his ears and 
said: 

" Won't you please say that again?" 

No furs, or velvets, or silks or satins for 
Honolulu girls. Just filmy mull&, and white 
linen or duck, and a sailor hat — and there 
you are — summer and winter the twelve 
months around. 

In Honolulu there is no north, no south, 
no east, no west. Direction is determined 
rather by localities. "Out Waikiki way," 
means toward the beach of that name and 
Diamond Head; "Makai," is toward the sea; 
"up Mauka way," indicates toward the 
mountains, and "over Ewa way," means in 
the direction of the famous Ewa plantation. 
It sounds odd to hear your guide say, "Drive 
Ewa on King Street," or "Go Makai to the 
wharf." 

We went out to Pearl Harbor where the 
government is creating a great naval sta- 
tion and spending millions in developing this 
Gibraltar of the mid-Pacific ; we climbed Pa- 
cific Heights, which is the Nob Hill of Hon- 



38 Journeying Round the World 

olulu, where wealthy residents have built 
themselves beautiful villas set in tropical 
gardens overlooking the sea. 

"Here's the home of a man who, with his 
wife, started forty-five years ago to make a 
tour of the world," observed our hostess, as 
we passed an elegant home. "He stopped 
in Honolulu, and he never got any farther. ' ' 

The birds of Honolulu you will notice, do 
not sing as ours do. They chirp instead— a 
soft, subdued, long-drawn note, that is 
weirdly beautiful and chimes in exactly with 
the surroundings. It is in perfect harmony 
with the golden mist that sifts softly from 
the sky, with the tropical indolence of the 
climate that invites to dreamy repose — this 
soft, sweet carol of the birds that we hear 
only at twilight when our golden-throated 
California songsters say good-night to their 
mates before they tuck their heads under 
their wings to go to sleep. 

Of course we had heard about the wonder- 
ful aquarium at Honolulu, but we were whol- 
ly unprepared for the malvelous specimens 
of sea life that we found darting about in the 
tanks at Waikiki Beach. They seemed more 
like floating flowers, or brilliant plumaged 
tropical birds, than just fish. 



Honolulu, the Happ)) Haven 



39 



"Who painted the fish*?" is a frequent in- 
quiry of tourists as they gaze on the gor- 
geous rainbow tinted fellows. Scientists say 
it is due to the color of the coral reefs in 
which they are hatched. Some are a deli- 
cate canary color, some are as gorgeous as 
peacocks, some are mottled, some are 
striped, some are spotted, and some are done 
in conventional patterns, but all wear coats 
of many and strikingly vivid colors. 

One gay young sport proudly waved after 
him a long, tail-like appendage fully eight 
inches in length, which curved about with 
splendid grace as he swam gaily along. Oc- 
casionally you will behold what seems to be 
a fragment of the rocks inside the tank, 
suddenly detach itself and swim calmly 
away from its perch and you discover that 
what you had thought to be a stone, is a fish 
marked and colored precisely after the same 
pattern as the rock itself. 

As we swept up before the entrance of the 
Moana Hotel at Waikiki for dinner, Peggy 
observed with a happy sigh : 

"I'm actually suffering from scenic indi- 
gestion. ' ' 

The hotel dining room is built out over 
the blue, shining bay and the native Ha- 



40 Journeying Round the World 

waiian waiters, clad in immaculate white 
linen, slip noiselessly about bringing you the 
most delicious food, and fruits in abundance 
— the papaia, a golden melon-like fruit, 
grapes, fresh from the vines, pineapples, and 
all the luscious products of tree and vine 
that grow in this Eden island. 

It was in Honolulu as a matter of fact, that 
we discovered the pineapple. Not the dry, 
green and unripe pines that we Americans 
eat and call good, after chipping them off 
and saturating over-night with sugar to 
draw the juice out. Oh, my, no! Never- 
more, after once tasting the Hawaiian pine- 
apple on its native heath — yellow as gold, 
mellow as an orange, juicy as a watermelon, 
sweet as honey. 

Dr. Robert J. Burdette, the famous 
preacher-humorist, who, with his wife, 
was spending the winter in Honolulu, de- 
scribed thus to us the proper way to eat a 
Hawaiian pineapple. " First," he said, 
"get your pineapple; then go into the bath- 
room, pin a bath towel around your neck, 
stand over the bathtub and cut that pine- 
apple into quarter sections. Then eat it 
just as you would a section of watermelon. 
The only difficulty is, as the old darky said 



Honolulu, the Happy Haven 41 

about eating melons, "It musses up yoh 
eahs so'." 

After dinner we lingered for a time in the 
open court which stretches between the 
hotel and the lapping waters of the bay. 
Electric bulbs in red, white and blue, 
twinkled in the trees, coffee and cigars were 
served at small tables on the piazzas, or 
under the trees, and the strains of the weird, 
sweet Hawaiian music stole over our senses 
till we dreamed we were in fairyland. 

On our return to the city we passed the 
Colonial home of Ex-Queen Liliuokalani 
near the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and up the 
avenue of stately Royal palms to Oahu Col- 
lege surrounded by its wonderful fence of 
coral a mile long and covered with night 
blooming cactus, thousands of them in 
bloom, their petals unfolding in beauty and 
fragrance under the silver radiance of the 
moon. 

Next morning at 10 o 'clock our ship sailed 
away and set her course toward Japan. 
Hawaiians understand perfectly the grace 
of hospitality. They know how to speed 
the parting as well as welcome the coming 
guest. It seems as if practically the whole 



42 Journeying Round the World 

town turns out to see you off, and brings 
along the band. 

This municipal band, by the way, is the 
pride of Honolulu. It is maintained by the 
city, the same as the police force or any other 
municipal organization, and its services are 
in demand for all sorts of public functions, 
but never to be had for private occasions. 
It is composed of native Hawaiians and, for 
an hour before we left, this band played 
splendid music. The plaintive strains of 
Hawaii's national song, " Aloha Oe" (Love 
to You) entranced our ears and there were 
patriotic airs, and Southern melodies and, 
just as our ship slowly slipped away from 
the wharf, the music lapsed into the majestic 
measures of Lohengrin's "Wedding March." 
Wherefore I do not know unless in compli- 
ment to the gay young widow who was going 
out to Manila to meet her fiance, or to the 
pretty Southern girl whose lover was wait- 
ing for her in Shanghai. In a twinkling, 
the music swung into the familiar "Colum- 
bia, the Gem of the Ocean" and, amidst 
great tossing of leis, clapping of hands and 
waving of handkerchiefs, we floated out 
over the still waters of Honolulu harbor, the 
last, sweet strains to reach our ears being 



Honolulu, the Happy Haven 43 

of that land of the free and home of the 
brave from which we were now taking our 
leave for a period of months to come. 

The native boys, diving for nickels and 
dimes, followed our ship for a mile or more, 
sporting in the water like huge, brown- 
skinned human porpoises. 



In Mid- ocean, 

Twelve days in mid-ocean — sailing, sail- 
ing, sailing ' ' out into the West where the 
sun goes down" to the point where the West 
meets the East. We cross the 180th merid- 
ian, and leave behind us the West — also a 
day which drops incidentally from our cal- 
endar. We fell asleep on Good Friday night, 
and awakened next morning to the East — 
and Easter Sunday. 

Thenceforth we are at the beginning of 
things. We are starting now from the ex- 
treme boundary of the round world — where 
the sun first gets up — away out in the mid- 
dle of the Pacific — and we are sailing toward 
the dawn of the Orient, the high noon of the 
equator, the afternoon of Western seas, and 
the sunset of the Occident. 

Glorious days were those! The great 
ocean calm as a summer lake — scarcely a 
ripple on its shining blue surface, turquoise 
skies, sunny days, soft breezes, opalescent 
sunsets and mellow moonlight nights. Not 
a sail in sight; not a companion vessel on 
the great ocean highway — absolutely alone. 

44 



In Mid-ocean 45 

It was as if we — this boat-load of a few hun- 
dred souls — were the sole occupants of the 
universe. Even the wireless lost connec- 
tion with us, and we missed the little daily 
paper printed on board giving us the tele- 
graphic briefs of the world which seems 
now so distant — so entirely out of our ken. 

You wake in the night sometimes and 
listen to the hourly call " All's well" as the 
ship's bell strikes the passing hours. You 
realize as never before how utterly solitary 
and alone you are — absolutely cut off from 
communication with the world at large — ■ 
and yet — you never think of fear. You feel 
as safe and secure as when lying in your 
bed at home. The days pass in such quick 
succession and with such a degree of same- 
ness that there is nothing to distinguish 
Monday from Wednesday, or Thursday 
from Tuesday — except on Sunday — that is 
different from any other day in the week. 
First, there is the regular weekly inspection 
of the crew by the ship's officers. On one 
side of the promenade deck, the Japanese 
stewards and crew line up, and on the other 
the Chinese. All are clad in spotless white 
and as the captain and chief officers go down 
the line, every hand is raised in salute. 



46 Journeying Round the World 

At 11 o'clock the ship's bell summons 
passengers to the dining saloon for church 
service. If no clergyman is on board, then 
the captain leads in the impressive ritual- 
istic service of the Episcopalian, or English 
church. Never will the Psalm of the Sea 
appeal to you as now — ' ' They that go down 
to the sea in ships. . .These see the works 
of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep 
... so He bringeth them to their desired 
haven." 

Wonderfully impressive, too, are the 
hjnnns — the voices rising in that familiar 
tune "There's a wideness in God's mercy, 
like the wideness of the sea," or the 
"Pilot" hymn. 

Our last night on shipboard before reach- 
ing Yokohama was made memorable by the 
captain's dinner — a function that always 
marks the final festivities on Pacific liners. 
The big ship had been our home so long — 
almost three weeks — that there was a feel- 
ing of universal regret at leaving her hos- 
pitable state rooms and spacious decks. We 
had formed delightful acquaintances, too, 
and, while eagerly looking forward to our 
arrival in Japan there was nevertheless a 



In Mid-ocean 47 

lingering regret at thought of leaving our 
floating home. 

The big dining-room was made gorgeous 
for this last banquet with hundreds of flags, 
representing the nations of the earth, flut- 
tering from the ceiling, while gay pennants 
and Japanese lanterns lent further color to 
the brilliant effect. A dinner party with 
the host absent seems a rather strange pro- 
ceeding, but that is what happened on this 
occasion for the captain stood at his post on 
the bridge all that afternoon and all through 
the night, for the approach to Yokohama 
is so perilous that it requires careful and 
expert seamanship. So, faithful to his 
trust, the captain guided the big ship while 
we, his guests, made merry below. 

It was midnight before festivities were 
over — the dinner, and after that, the pre- 
sentation of trophies won in the various 
deck games and tournaments which had 
whiled away the time of our voyage, and 
then the concert in the music room. It was 
scarcely dawn next morning when we were 
awakened by the vigorous beating of the 
big gong announcing that we were anchored 
just outside the harbor of Yokohama. Dap- 
per little Japanese surgeons from the quar- 



48 Journeying Round the World 

antine station were already on board and 
anxious to begin their work of inspection. 
We hustled into our clothes and answered 
the summons to the dining saloon where we 
were subjected to the quick, keen scrutiny 
of the health officers who politely and 
promptly pronounced us all good subjects 
for the Land of the Rising Sun. 

Outside the rain was falling in torrents. 
Umbrellas and raincoats were in demand, 
and we were taken off in relays in little 
launches which landed us on the wharf be- 
fore the custom house. 

In nearly all ports in the Far East you 
will notice that the big ocean liner rarely 
docks but puts her passengers ashore in 
launches. Some Japanese officials, after a 
merely nominal examination of our baggage, 
slapped on the stickers and passed us 
through the custom house. 



The Land of the 'Riksha. 

Some one has said that Japan is the child 
of the world's old age and it certainly does 
give one the impression of an empire of 
animated dolls when you first set eyes on 
the diminutive little brown men, the pretty, 
pink-cheeked maidens teetering along on 
their clicking sandals, and the jinrikshas 
like overgrown baby cabs, mounted on two 
rubber- tired wheels and built after the fash- 
ion of the English baby coach. All this com- 
bines to make an American feel very big, 
very awkward, and very ungainly. Indeed, 
one of the amusing sights of Japan is that 
of a 200-pound American crowded into a 
jinriksha, his feet half hanging out for want 
of space, hauled about the streets by a lively 
little Jap who sprints along at a jog trot. 

Harold Bolce says that one ride in a rail- 
way train in the Land of the Rising Sun 
does much to disillusion the American who 
has fondly believed that Uncle Sam is the 
godfather of Japan. Take a train at Yoko- 
hama and ride to Tokyo and, but for the 
character of your fellow passengers, you 

49 



50 Journeying Round the World 

might readily believe you were traveling 
from Liverpool to London. The whole sys- 
tem is thoroughly British. You find painted 
over the ticket booth at the station "Book- 
ing Office, ' ' and you never ' ' check your bag- 
gage" in Japan — you "forward your lug- 
gage. ' ' Whether you find it at your destin- 
ation is another thing. It fills your soul 
with doubt to behold posted up in the bag- 
gage room of the railway station "Luggage 
forwarded in all directions," and you won- 
der uneasily in which direction vours will go. 

You notice too that there are girls in most 
of the ticket offices. You almost always 
buy your railway ticket of a girl in Japan. 
In fact, the women of Japan, under the new 
regime, are coming into a much larger life 
than hitherto. In a single bank in Tokyo 
I was told that fifty young women are em- 
ployed. At Osaka, the great industrial cen- 
ter — the Manchester of Japan — over 40,000 
women and children are employed in the 
big silk and cotton factories, and in the tele- 
phone offices are 700 more. 

But the thing that most impresses you 
in all Japan, is its swarming human life. 
KScareety a woman on the crowded streets, 
or a child of sufficient size to bear the bur- 



The Land of the 'Rifysha. 51 

den, but has on her back a baby. Carried 
pappoose fashion, inside the loose kimono, 
that little black head is always in evidence, 
bobbing over the shoulders. Another thing 
that impresses you is the fact that you al- 
most never hear a baby cry in Japan al- 
though they are swarming all around you. 
Stolid little bunches of humanity, they re- 
gard life philosophically and soberly — for 
you rarely see a baby smile either. 

A missionary to Japan, who has served 
many years at Nagoya, told me that no place 
in the empire containing a population of 
less than 100,000 is considered a city. The 
rest are all villages. When one stops to re- 
flect that Japan has a population of 50,- 
000,000 — almost one-half that of the entire 
United States — and is increasing at the enor- 
mous rate of 700,000 annually, and yet has 
but 18,000 square miles of tillable land, one 
can understand her congested ^population 
and how eagerly she has taken possession of 
her Korean territory. Fancy crowding 50,- 
000,000 people into a little empire whose 
area is slightly more than that of Montana! 

The United States Department of Agri- 
culture makes the statement that the cul- 
tivated area of Japan comprises a district 



52 Journeying Round the World 

equal to about one-third the size of the State 
of Illinois. In fact, only fifteen per cent, of 
the territory of the empire is adapted to the 
cultivation of their annual crops, and yet 
these little brown men have conducted their 
farming with such industry and scientific 
skill that this insignificant area has sup- 
ported 50,000,000 people. 

Kamakura is an hour's ride from Yoko- 
hama by steam car, situated on the seashore 
and it is one of the beauty spots of Japan 
and a favorite watering place. It is here 
that you see the famous Daibutsu statue of 
Buddha. As the train passes out into the 
open from Yokohama, you get your first 
glimpse of the country with its gardens and 
rice fields, its bamboo forests and intensely 
cultivated fields. 

As soon as we disembarked at the railway 
station at Kamakura we were surrounded 
by 'riksha men, jabbering and gesticulating 
to secure our attention and our patronage. 
An official who spoke very good English 
came to our rescue and we were soon 
mounted in the funny, two- wheeled cabs. 

Our human horses on this occasion were 
somewhat handicapped. One was a little, 
weazened old man about as big as a minute, 



The Land of the 'Riksha 53 

and another had but one eye. The little 
old man was assigned to Peggy. Now 
Peggy is no lightweight and she rebelled at 
the prospect. 

"You no can haul me," she protested in 
voluble Jap-English, " I too much heavy — 
you too much old — sabe?" 

For reply, the little old man puckered his 
toothless jaws into a cheerful grin, spit on 
his hands, grabbed the thills of the 'riksha 
and trotted gaily off leading the procession, 
but he vanished at the first stopping place 
and was seen no more, his place being taken 
by a younger and stronger man. 

If you do not visit Nikko you do not see 
Japan, is the opinion, not only of the Jap- 
anese themselves, but of all tourists who 
have made a pilgrimage to this charming 
spot away up in the mountains, two thousand 
feet above Tokyo, from which city it is dis- 
tant five hours by rail and reached by ex- 
press trains which give excellent service. The 
first-class compartments, by which all for- 
eigners travel as the second-class are simply 
impossible in the Orient for Americans, are 
very comfortable indeed, the seats running 
lengthwise and well upholstered. Japanese 
of the upper class also patronize these com- 



54 Journeying Round the World 

partments and you are interested in watch- 
ing them as they enter the car, slip their 
shoes off and draw their immaculate white- 
stockinged feet under them, sitting Turk 
fashion. 

As we approach Mkko the train climbs 
higher and higher, winding through the most 
beautiful section of country where grow 
monumental forest trees. For miles the way 
parallels the famous avenue lined on either 
side with giant cryptomeria trees of three 
centuries growth. This avenue is twenty-five 
miles long and is one of the sights of Japan. 
When the train finally puffs into the station, 
you are met with the usual flock of 'riksha 
men who have the Niagara Falls " barkers" 
beaten to a finish; you mount the queer little 
vehicle and away you go, up the straight, 
steep street — so steep that it requires the 
united effort of two men to run the 'riksha 
— one to pull and one to push. You pro- 
ceed in this fashion for a full mile through 
the principal street and then make an abrupt 
turn to Hotel Kanaya which is perched on 
a terrace high above the street and over- 
hanging the rushing river spanned by the 
famous Sacred Bridge across which no one 



The Land of the 'Riksha 55 

is permitted to pass except the Emperor and 
members of the Imperial family. 

As we faced the steep incline leading up 
to the hotel, Peggy shrieked in alarm and 
begged to get down and walk, but without 
the slightest halt, the little brown men 
whisked our procession of 'rikshas around 
the curve while a third man darted out from 
the flock of dogs that obstruct the streets, 
to help push. Altogether, we made quite 
an imposing procession, our five 'rikshas 
propelled by fifteen men. I felt like the 
Queen of Sheba approaching with her court, 
and this sensation was augmented when, as 
we landed at the hotel entrance, we were 
met by the proprietor and a retinue of at- 
tendants, all bowing and kowtowing as they 
welcomed us to their humble abode — which 
happened to be a magnificent, modern hotel, 
with rooms arranged in charming suites and 
pretty Japanese maidens to dance attend- 
ance and bring braziers of coals to our rooms 
in the frosty, early morning. 

Mkko has a double glory — that of nature 
and of art. There are the mountains, cas- 
cades and monumental forest trees, and 
there are the temples and pagodas — eight 
hundred of them — scattered through the for- 



56 Journeying Round the World 

ests, the most perfect assemblage of shrines 
in all the world. Surely the ancient worship- 
pers had a just appreciation of nature's 
loveliness when they reared there, among 
the majestic mountains and the leaping cas- 
cades, the mausoleum of the illustrious 
Shogun dynasty. 

If you can plan to be at Mkko the 1st of 
June you will witness the great annual fes- 
tival of the temples. The Imperial house- 
hold has a palace at Mkko which is usually 
occupied by some members of the family 
during the summer months when the place 
is crowded with visitors and pilgrims who 
come to worship at its shrines. 

There are innumerable shops at Nikko, 
filled with exquisitely carved wood, and for 
a few sen you can pick up trays and sou- 
venirs of the most beautiful workmanship. 
Nikko is also the fur market of Japan and 
you may purchase lovely white fur slippers 
or ' ' sneaks ' ' for half a dollar — such as would 
cost you four times that sum in the Oriental 
shops at home. There are beautiful collars 
and neck pieces, too, to be had for a mere 
trifle compared with our prices. But then, 
there is always the duty to reckon with. 

Shopping in Japan, by the way, is a fas- 



The Land of the 'Riksha 57 

cinating business. You are beset by shop- 
keepers everywhere, who send represent- 
atives to your hotel to ask your patronage. 
You find cards galore, and envelopes filled 
with the most artistic and tempting adver- 
tising matter stuck under the door of your 
room. The best hotels no longer permit 
merchants to bring goods to the private 
rooms of guests, but you find them lurking 
in corridors and halls and in hotel parlors 
eager to display their bargains. When you 
go to the shops you are met by bowing and 
salaaming clerks and proprietors who fairly 
confuse you with the multitude of lovely 
things to tempt the yen from your purse — 
mandarin coats, kimonos, exquisitely em- 
broidered crepes, carved ivory and an end- 
less array of artistic and beautiful articles. 

In some of the select shops to which your 
guide conducts you, tea and rice cakes are 
passed about on lacquered trays by little 
Japanese girls and you are treated quite as 
if you were an invited guest instead of just 
a shopper. I suspect that many a visitor 
is hypnotized into purchasing by this charm- 
ing and polite custom of these shrewd little 
merchants of the Orient. One must learn 
how to shop in Japan, however, for prices 



58 Journeying Round the World 

vary in different stores in the most astonish- 
ing manner. Your guide always has his 
particular round of certain shops which al- 
low him a percentage on purchases. If you 
chance to suggest a shop of which you have 
heard, and his face suddenly becomes a 
blank, and he protests that he never heard 
of such a place, you may set it down as a 
certainty that he has no arrangement with 
that special shop, and likely it will be to 
your financial interest to look it up inde- 
pendently. 

"We don't have to live in the United 
States to be popular," said Peggy as we 
trailed through the streets of Tokyo leading 
to the great Asakusa Temple, followed by a 
throng of curious native men, women and 
children who gazed at us as if we were es- 
caped lunatics. 

"This is the Coney Island of Tokyo," ob- 
served our guide as we wedged our way 
along the crowded thoroughfares. As he 
was educated in one of our American uni- 
versities and served an apprenticeship in 
New York, he ought to know what he is 
talking about in the way of comparisons. 
It did resemble Coney Island — this wide 
street lined with shops and bazaars, wax- 



The Land of the 'Riksha 59 

work shows, cineomatagraphs, and scream- 
ing phonographs, and crowded with people. 
No vehicles of any kind are permitted here 
and we had to leave our 'rikshas at the en- 
trance while we joined the throng of pedes- 
trians. All were headed one way — toward 
the temple — one of the largest in all Japan, 
where the people, rich and poor, and mostly 
poor and very poor at that, come to worship. 
We ascended the flight of stone steps, always 
followed by a curious throng which so in- 
creased as we went that by the time we 
reached the entrance to the wide, open 
porch of the temple we could hardly make 
any progress at all. They were orderly and 
perfectly polite, but were evidently con- 
sumed with curiosity and amazement at our 
appearance. The women half timidly 
touched our clothes, fingered our hats gin- 
gerly, pointed at Peggy's blonde locks, and 
then chattered and laughed among them- 
selves apparently in great glee. It became 
fairly embarassing. 

"Do you suppose it is our motor veils?" 
whispered Peggy, for riding in a 'riksha is 
about as fatal to the slant of your hat as fac- 
ing a head wind in an automobile, hence the 
veils. 



60 Journeying Round the World 

"No," said the guide, "it's just because 
you are foreigners and appear strange to 
them. They're talking about your hair 
now," he observed; "they never see any one 
but foreigners with light hair you know." 

Kneeling before the shrine of the temple 
in the wide portico were men, women and 
children, murmuring prayers to Buddha and 
tossing coins into a great hopper, closing 
their devotions by solemnly clapping the 
hands together three times. 

"The daily contributions here amount to 
about 300 yen ($150)," said the guide. 

Muttering all around were doves, the 
sacred birds of Japan, and chickens were 
running about among the worshippers. One 
old rooster was perched on a round of the 
hopper in front of the shrine and occasion- 
ally a stray coin would hit him, but this in- 
cident did not ruffle his feathers or his dig- 
nity in the least. 

There are some 20,000 temples in Japan, 
the Sixth Shogun Temple in Shiba Park 
being one of the finest. This is where the 
Japanese nobility go to worship the memory 
of their ancestors and the amount of gold 
lacquer and exquisite carving in this one 
temple would, if turned into coin of com- 



The Land of the 'Rif^sha 61 

mensurate value, go far toward liquidating 
the national debt of Japan. 

We sailed from Yokohama on the Korea 
and took advantage of our all-day stop at 
Kobe to run up to Kyoto, fifty miles away. 
The train climbed slowly and arrived so 
much behind schedule time that we had but 
one short hour to spend in this lovely city 
which is considered by travelers the "park 
of the world, ' ' with its more than nine hun- 
dred Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, 
its exquisite pottery and porcelain and 
cloisonne productions. 

At Kobe we entered the Inland Sea of 
Japan, which is one of the world's beauty 
spots. All day long the big ocean liner 
threaded her way in and out among the love- 
ly islands that stud the blue waters of this 
land-locked sea. A special pilot is taken 
on board at Kobe, for no sea captain will 
trust his individual knowledge to the chang- 
ing tides, the narrow channels and tortuous 
ways of this winding course. Every island, 
no matter how small, is inhabited and culti- 
vated from the water's edge to the highest 
peak, the fields of green maize climbing to 
the summit. Small villages and settlements 
populate the larger islands and this Inland 



62 Journeying Round the World 

Sea is a favorite summer resort for the Eng- 
lish, German and foreign residents of Shang- 
hai and other cities on the coast of China. 

The largest vessels in the world anchor 
in the spacious harbor of Nagasaki which 
guards the western entrance to the Inland 
Sea and it was here that we saw our huge 
liner coaled for the run across the Yellow 
Sea to Shanghai. As soon as we came to 
anchor a small fleet of barges swarmed about 
us, manned by hundreds of Japanese — men 
and women — and all day long baskets of 
coal, not large enough to hold more than 
a small hodfull, were passed rapidly from 
hand to hand until dumped into the bunkers 
of the ship. Some of the women had babies 
strapped to their backs, and some of them 
were mere children not more than twelve 
years old. The rapidity with which coal is 
thus loaded by hand is astonishing. I was 
told that the record amount to date was 
1150 tons in eleven hours. Imagine how 
many pairs of hands worked continuously 
for eleven hours in order to load by this 
slow process as many hundred tons. 

Progressive as the Japanese are in many 
things, they seem slow in grasping the pos- 
sibilities of machine over hand labor. They 



The Land of the 'Riksha 63 

make human horses, and human engines, 
and human levers of themselves, and one 
wonders at the amount of vigor and strength 
stored up in those little brown bodies. 

It is something heartrending — the way the 
women work in Japan, sometimes hauling 
loads through the streets, always carrying 
children on their backs, and as you watch 
it all you think of the poor old woman in 
Frances Little's "The Lady of the Decor- 
ation" who asked the missionary: 

"If I paid your God with offerings and 
prayers, do you think He would make my 
work easier? I am so tired," and of that 
other scene so graphically pictured when the 
mothers of the little kindergartners sat be- 
wildered before the magic lantern show 
given for their entertainment, until there 
was flashed upon the sheet the picture of 
Christ toiling up the mountain under the 
burden of the cross, when a sudden interest 
swept over the room and every silent, stolid 
woman woke to instant life. The story was 
new and strange, but the fact was as old as 
life itself. It touched their lives and brought 
quick tears of sympathy to their eyes. 

At Kyoto we saw, in one of the temples, 
great coils of rope made from hair sent by 



64 Journeying Round the World 

the women of Japan, to bind the timbers to- 
gether, as no nails are used in the construc- 
tion of the temple. 

"I believe it shall be given to the women 
of Japan to teach us the real meaning of 
self-sacrifice and loyalty," said a missionary. 
"The mystical East can teach the practical 
West many things." 

A missionary went to see a certain Japan- 
ese woman in Yokohama whose husband and 
two sons had been killed in the war be- 
tween Japan and Russia. She expected to 
find her overwhelmed with grief but instead, 
this thrice afflicted woman of Japan looked 
at her with calm eyes and said: 

"I have been giving thanks to God that 
He has permitted me to give my all for my 
country." 

When the Crown Prince of Russia visited 
Japan a few years ago an attempt was made 
to assassinate him. Next morning, at the 
gate of the Royal Palace where he was stay- 
ing, there was found the dead body of a 
young Japanese girl and on it a note saying 
that she had felt so keenly the disgrace of 
an attempt to kill a guest of the Empire, 
that it seemed to her the only way to ex- 
piate the crime was to offer her life as a 



The Land of the 'Rifysha 65 

sacrifice. 

A young Japanese scholar, a graduate of 
the University at Tokyo, told me the secret, 
I believe, of the Japanese victory over the 
Russians. He said: 

"We count our country first in all things. 
To lose one's life for her is the highest 
honor," and it is this principle that the Jap- 
anese mother impresses on her sons — first, 
last and all the time. 



Shanghai, the Paris of the Pacific. 

It is a 36-hour run across the Yellow Sea 
from Nagasaki to Shanghai and we found 
the waters smooth as oil — scarcely a wrinkle- 
on the surface of this sea of molten gold. 
It was just at dawn of a perfect April morn- 
ing that we dropped anchor in the port of 
this great Chinese city, and found a trim 
little launch ready to take us fifteen miles 
up the wide mouth of the Yangtze to the 
city itself. We greatly enjoyed the run up 
the river in the fresh, morning breeze. 

I have been asked many times what place 
in all my travels I liked best and I have 
astonished many people by putting Shang- 
hai in the front row and very near the top. 
It is a wonderfully interesting city. Frank 
Carpenter says of it: 

"The growth of Shanghai beats that of 
the gourd of Jonah, which sprang up in a 
night. It is now a modern European city. 
It has business blocks which might be 
dropped down in New York or London and 
not be out of place, and residences which 
would be fine in Washington or Paris. Along 

66 



Shanghai, Paris of the Pacific 67 

the Bund, the wide road which faces the 
river, are a dozen or more banks whose cap- 
ital runs into the tens of millions and whose 
managers are so trusted that they can dip 
into the pockets of the nations and draw 
out at pleasure. On the same street are 
club houses, some of which have cost hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars to build. There 
are big hotels where you can live as well as 
at home, and shops, with plate-glass win- 
dows, containing European goods of every 
description. Shanghai is the Paris of the 
Far East. It is one of the richest cities in 
Asia, and it takes the best of all that is 
going." 

Out Bubbling Well Road, which is the 
fashionable residential thoroughfare, there 
is a regular " millionaire's row" of magnifi- 
cent homes, and the English, French and 
German sections where the ambassadors live 
make you rub your eyes and wonder if you 
are on Riverside Drive in New York, or in 
the Back Bay section of Boston. 

It is only the Far East that can offer 
such luxury of living at small cost. Domes- 
tic service commands a mere pittance. The 
wife of a missionary stationed at Wuhu, 
who was a passenger on board our steam- 



68 Journeying Round the World 

ship going across the Pacific, told me in the 
most matter-of-fact way that she always 
kept four servants — and the combined wages 
of the quartette totaled exactly six dollars 
a month in our money. One reason why so 
many servants are required is because the 
work is distinctly classified. Your cook 
would no more think of performing any 
other labor beside cooking than a dress- 
maker in this country would think of doing 
millinery. "To each one, his work" seems 
to be the slogan. The cook, cooks; the sec- 
ond boy sweeps and waits on table ; the ayah, 
takes care of the baby; the laundryman 
washes. There's no " general housemaid" 
idea in China. 

You discover immediately that the 'rik- 
shas in China are far more comfortable than 
in Japan. They are more roomy, and they 
are hung lower, and they roll smoothly and 
noiselessly along on pneumatic tires drawn 
by swift-footed Chinamen, clad in blue 
denim uniforms — for China is the Land of 
the Blue Gown. 

One of the features of Shanghai life which 
is bound to challenge your immediate at- 
tention is the picturesque East Indian po- 
licemen — six feet tall and straight as a wil- 



Shanghai, Paris of the Pacific 69 

low, their dark features like carved mahog- 
any and gay red, blue, green or yellow tur- 
bans wound artistically around their heads. 
They stand at every corner and crossing, 
their long, black beards tucked inside their 
uniforms and their great height giving them 
a most imposing appearance. 

If you have but ten days in China, as did 
we, about the best itinerary you can plan 
is to take a trip up the Yangtze River to 
Hankow, six hundred miles into the heart of 
China. The trip occupies six days — three 
going up and the same number coming back. 
If you have two or three weeks before you 
must return to Shanghai to catch your 
steamer, then plan by all means to visit 
Peking. You can go up the river to Han- 
kow, as I mention, and then, instead of re- 
turning to Shanghai by the same route, take 
train at Hankow and go directly to Peking 
— a ride of some thirty hours I believe. 
Then you can visit the Great Wall of China 
and return by way of Tientsin and down the 
coast by steamer to Shanghai. 

As our time was limited, we had to cut 
Peking out of our itinerarv and content our- 
selves with this sail up the Yang-tze .stop- 
ping at Nanking on our return trip and com- 
ing thence by rail back to Shanghai. 



Up the Yangtze. 

You know the name Yangtze-Kiang sig- 
nifies ' ' River of Fragrant Flowers . " It was 
spring in China, and I wish I could make 
you see the placid beauty of it all as we 
floated up that mighty waterway between 
shores green as emerald on a river of molten 
gold — for the waters of the Yangtze are 
literally golden. Some one less poetic might 
say they were simply " roily" or muddy, but 
I defy anyone with a spark of sentiment in 
his nature as he watches the white foam 
burst its bubbles from the trail of the 
steamer on the yellow surface of the river 
under the sunshine of a spring day to be 
so prosaic. 

In some places the river widens to a dis- 
tance of twenty miles, and again it narrows 
to a slender stream and you sit in your com- 
fortable steamer chair under the wide deck 
awnings and watch the panorama on shore 
— the green fields growing right down to the 
water's edge, the trees and the wild flowers 
just bursting into bloom — pink and white, 
and yellow and pale lilac — a perfect kaleido- 

70 



Up the Yangtze 71 

scope of delicate colors, wafting a wealth of 
sweet perfume. From lofty mountain peaks 
against the skyline in the distance you see 
tall pagodas rise — shrines where worship- 
ping hundreds climb the steep sides to bow 
to Buddha. All along shore are fishermen's 
huts of straw, and sampans heavily laden 
with freight and passengers are towed along- 
side, a single coolie being the motive power, 
walking in a path and pulling the boat, after 
the fashion of mules on a canal. 

Every August the river overflows its 
banks, at some points rising as high as the 
trees along shore. It is then that we read 
in our home papers of the awful destruction 
of life and of crops. This annual summer 
overflow is caused by snow melting in the 
mountains above the source of the river. 
Many people plan to go back inland each 
summer and so arrange their crops that 
they can be harvested before floodtime. 

The steamers operated on the river are 
comfortable to the point of luxury. They 
accommodate about twenty-five first-class 
passengers and the state rooms are far more 
commodious than on the great ocean liners. 
There are no upper berths and you enjoy 
all the delights of a model houseboat. Our 



72 Journeying Round the World 

steamer was a perfect little gem of a craft 
— painted snow white with soft green silken 
hangings in her saloons, and growing palms 
giving an artistic touch. 

In my American egotism, I had expected 
something rather crude in the shape of a 
tug that would convey us into the heart of 
heathen China, and I was so amazed at the 
wholly modern and strictly down-to-date ar- 
rangements of this trim river steamer that 
I remarked to the skipper: 

"I suppose this is a new line, is it not?" 
"It has been in operation forty years, 
Madame," was his reply; and I was sudden- 
ly shocked into a very real realization of 
how young, and immature and ignorant I 
was. This impression of the youth and te- 
merity of our young republic deepens as you 
sail on up the Yangtze past fertile fields and 
realize that for thousands of years this same 
agricultural activity has been going on, year 
after year, generation after generation — 
long before America was even on the map. 
We recall too that a school of languages 
flourished in China nearly four thousand 
years ago, and that the oldest newspaper 
in the world, published in Peking, appeared 
regularly before many Western peoples had 
devised an alphabet. 



Up the Yangtze 73 

The steamer touches at various cities and 
towns — at Chinkiang, Kiukiang, Wuhu, and 
at Nanking — where on our return trip we 
stop over for a day to visit the famous Ming 
Tombs and to explore this beautiful old 
city with its willow-shaded roads, its great 
wall, and its splendid mission schools. 

Early in the morning of our fourth day 
from Shanghai our steamer moors at the 
wharf at Hankow. It is here that the great 
Russian tea houses are located and a visit to 
one of them is worth while. You will see 
how the tea leaves are handled, from the 
best grade to the lowest, and not an atom 
wasted. The dust of the leaves is made into 
bricks to be used for the exiles in Siberia. 
These bricks are as black as coal and as 
hard as the ordinary brick of commerce. 
You can flake off enough to dissolve in a 
cup of hot water and it makes a fairly decent 
cup of tea. For six weeks in the year — 
from May till the middle of June — the tea 
taster is the grand Mogul in Hankow. It is 
his business to taste and test all the various 
brands and on his judgment rests its market 
value. It is said that he never swallows his 
sample sip, and even then the nervous strain 
is so great that no tea-taster can endure his 



74 Journeying Round the World 

exacting duty longer than ten or twelve 
years. 

It was in Hankow that we saw an illustra- 
tion of the Chinese method of punishing 
criminals. We were passing the police sta- 
tion and noticed across the street several 
Chinamen standing in a row, the head of 
each thrust through a hole in an immense 
square board on which was written in huge 
Chinese characters the nature of the crime 
he had committed which in this case was 
thieving. The chief of police, who was an 
Englishman, told us that these men were 
condemned to stand thus all day long for 
thirty days in the public streets as punish- 
ment. 



Sailing Toward the Equator. 

We sailed from Shanghai on the Delta 
and nowhere in all our travels did we see 
such glorious sunsets as in those tropic skies 
that bend above the blue waters of the China 
Sea. The wondrous cloud effects of gold 
and crimson, of purpling lights and shadows 
in which the twilight lingered were enchant- 
ing. The second morning after leaving 
Shanghai we found ourselves in the tropics 
and heavy clothing was quickly exchanged 
for summer garb, while electric fans began 
whirling in cabins and dining saloon. 

We spent thirty hours at Hongkong, 
sailing south at noon on the last day of 
April. The scene presented by this won- 
derful city at night is one never to be for- 
gotten. As we sat on deck we faced a literal 
fairyland of flashing lights. On every craft 
afloat in the bay — and there were hundreds 
of them — and from the windows of every 
building on shore, which stretch from the 
water front to the summit of the loftiest 
peaks, flashed and twinkled the flame of an 
electric bulb, or a brilliant arc light, until it 

75 



76 Journeying Round the World 

seemed that the stars of heaven itself had 
come down to rest upon this enchanted bay 
and wondrous city builded on the heights 
which rise abruptly on the little island that 
lies like a jewel at the mouth of the river 
which here mingles its waters with those of 
the sea. 

And right here I want to give my readers 
a tip that Hongkong is a splendid place to 
shop. Never mind the heat, even though the 
perspiration bathes your brow and drips off 
your nose — you just shop — and if you are 
too lazy to leave the ship, shop right there, 
for the merchants fairly swarm on board 
bringing their goods. You may order a 
pongee or linen suit made for yourself, your 
husband or your daughter and it will be de- 
livered on board next morning. The drawn 
work, grass cloth and laces make you fairly 
hold your breath. You can buy a waist pat- 
tern, done in beautiful Canton drawn work 
for $1.25 in gold, and strips of this exquisite, 
lace-like handwork may be purchased for 
as little as fifteen cents a yard. 

Then there's the bamboo and rattan 
chairs. On this English line of steamers, 
unlike the Pacific Mail and Atlantic liners, 
we could not rent a steamer chair for the 



Sailing Toward the Equator 77 

voyage. But that's no hardship or extra ex- 
pense, for you can buy one in Hongkong 
for about the same money you pay for the 
use of one across the Pacific or the Atlantic. 
It fairly rends your soul that you cannot 
carry your prize through Europe and on 
home with you, but such a proceeding would 
cost more than a dozen chairs. You no 
sooner come to anchor in the bay of Hong- 
kong than Chinese merchants swarm the 
decks offering these chairs for sale. If you 
talk long enough, and act indifferent enough, 
you'll secure a splendid rattan steamer chair, 
with sufficient extension to allow you to 
lounge at full length, for the modest sum 
of $1.25. 

One of the sights of Hongkong is its fa- 
mous Flower Street. It is one of those steep 
streets in which that city abounds. You 
have to climb cement stairs as you ascend — 
leading right up the slope from Queen 
Street, and when you come to it you will 
utter an involuntary cry of delight. Stretch- 
ing up the incline for a block or more is a 
continuous bazaar of the loveliest cut 
flowers. Great clusters of Easter lilies were 
thrust in our faces — a dozen or more bios- 



78 Journeying Round the World 

soms in the bunch — for the modest price of 
fifteen cents. 

Then you must make the ascent to the 
Peak by the electric tram. In seven min- 
utes from the time you leave the sea level 
you are three thousand feet above it with a 
marvelous panoramic view of the bay, the 
city and the sea stretched out before you. 
On your way down, get off at Bowen Road 
and walk through the winding roads past 
gardens of flowers and ferns, of banyan and 
bamboo trees, in the midst of which are set 
beautiful homes. You will come out in 
Queen's Road in the heart of the shopping 
district. 

Thirty hours from Hongkong and you are 
at Singapore — the halfway house in your 
great swing around the circle. You are now 
about eighty miles from the equator and 
naturally expect to find it hot and humid. A 
rip-roaring thunder storm heralded our 
arrival there and cooled the atmosphere in 
the most agreeable manner. I have suffered 
more from heat and humidity on a summer 
day in New York than I did during the 
twenty-hours we were in Singapore under 
the very shine of the equator. 

A young native, clad in spotless white 



Sailing Toward the Equator 79 

duck, who came aboard directly our ship lay 
at anchor, surveyed our party carefully and 
promptly claimed us for his own. He dis- 
played a letter of recommendation from the 
American Consul, calmly attached himself 
to us with an air of proprietorship, politely 
but firmly ignored all efforts to shake him 
off, escorted us ashore, placed us in a tram 
car, disembarked us when we reached the 
city, bundled us into a gharry — we had 
ceased to resist by this time — and proceeded 
to show us the city, and the surroundings 
thereof, including Johore, distant an hour 
by steam car. Truth to tell, he did it rather 
well, too. He took us first to the museum 
where we saw a regular canned menagerie — 
enough tigers, and lions, and beasts and 
birds and reptiles to haunt your dreams 
forever. 

The island of Singapore, it must be remem- 
bered, is known as the Lion Island, owing to 
the many lions that stalk through its jungles. 
Tigers too abound, and the first thing that 
greeted us as we entered the museum was 
a huge stuffed tiger killed by the Sultan of 
Johore, and presented by him to the mu- 
seum. This Malay monster reclined in such 
a lifelike position in his glass cage and had 



80 Journeying Round the World 

such a sardonic grin on his classic features 
that Peggy began softly chanting her favor- 
ite limerick: 

"There was a young lady of Niger, 
Who sat on the back of a tiger, ' ' etc. 

We went to the Botanical Gardens — all 
these Oriental cities have botanical gardens 
— they don't call them parks over there. 
The soil of Singapore is such a brilliant brick 
color that the roads literally run red be- 
tween the close-cut turf of green and the 
rich, rank growth of vines and hedges. We 
tasted the delicious fruits of the tropics — 
mangosteens, the queer, little dwarfed ba- 
nanas, and other luscious products known 
only to equatorial regions. 

The roads in and about Singapore might 
be held up as models to the nations of the 
earth — so smooth and hard, so beautifully 
laid out, curving past pineapple plantations, 
groves of rubber trees and sago palms and 
tapioca fields. There are hundreds of auto- 
mobiles in Singapore and the familiar honk- 
honk was good to our American ears after 
our sojourn in the land of the 'riksha and 
sedan chair, the hard-working coolie and the 
human horses of China and Japan. Singa- 
pore swings like a pendant from the south- 



Sailing Toward the Equator 81 

era tip of the Malay Peninsula, and is only 
separated by a narrow strait less than a 
mile wide, from the mainland ol Asia. The 
island is egg-shaped, and is twenty-eight 
miles long by fourteen miles wide. 

The next port is Penang, about twenty- 
four hours' sail from Singapore, and one of 
the most charming places at which your 
ship touches. Be sure to go ashore at 
Penang. 



Ceylon's Spicy Breezes. 

"May I put in the wind chute, Madame?" 
were the first words that greeted my sleepy 
ears as the flush of dawn swept the rosy 
sky above the broad expanse of the Indian 
Ocean. 

My soul grew sick with fear and I stam- 
mered, "Is — is — it getting rough?" while 
visions of the mal de mer I had buried in the 
China Sea, now leagues behind, flashed 
through my mental vision. 

"No, Madame, no — smoother," was the 
reassuring reply of the steward, "and 
warmer. This chute will send a current of 
air through your cabin," and he proceeded 
to fix in place a section of metal pipe which 
projected out beyond the port-hole. 

Instantly a miniature cyclone of salt, sea 
air shot through the pipe almost blowing 
me out of my berth. That blessed "shoot" 
caught every wandering breeze on the In- 
dian Ocean, and a few from the Arabian 
Sea to the north of us, I suspect, and swept 
them through our cabin. 

Peggy stirred sleepily on her upper shelf 



82 



Ceylon's Spicy Breezes 83 

and murmured something about the spicy 
breezes that blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle. 

The entrance to the harbor of Colombo is 
said to be the narrowest in the world en- 
tered by big ships. A breakwater encloses 
it, and just outside, our pilot came aboard as 
the Delta lazily sailed along toward the en- 
trance at nine o'clock on a glorious starlight 
night. It seemed as if the sides of the great 
ship almost grazed the bulkheads from 
which glared two immense headlights — one 
red and the other green — each marking the 
edge of the seawall and showing the width 
of the entrance. 

An Englishman stood at my side as we 
leaned over the bow watching the careful 
and accurate piloting of our ship through 
the narrow way. 

"Some of these pilots make a thousand 
pounds a year," he remarked, "guiding ves- 
sels into the harbor. You see our passage 
occupies about ten minutes and the man at 
the wheel gets three or four pounds for the 
service." 

Another instance of the value of "know- 
ing how. ' ' 

Peggy and I did Colombo by tram, riding 
in the second class compartment with the 



84 Journeying Round the World 

hoi polloi, so to speak. The first class com- 
partment consisted of the front seat only, 
which could be shared with the motorman. 
He was big and brown and greasy looking, 
and as it cost as much again to ride out 
there, J*eggj and I decided to economize 
and at the same time get the local color of 
the place by fraternizing with the natives. 
We recklessly embarked on the first tram we 
met and when the conductor came for fares, 
we politely opened our purses and let him 
extract the needful coin. In this way we 
rode twelve miles over two different lines 
for as many cents. Seeing that we were 
orphans and alone, and foreigners at that, 
the Singhalese conductor, who spoke fairly 
good English, constituted himself our guide, 
philosopher and friend, pointing out the 
places of interest as we passed. 

On our return from this sight-seeing trip 
we drank delicious Ceylon tea in a pictur- 
esque pagoda-like tea house, and prowled 
about the shops, for here as elsewhere in the 
Orient, shopping is a very fascinating busi- 
ness. Really, though, the best place to shop 
at Ceylon is on shipboard. The shops come 
to you in the shape of swarthy merchants 
carrying big bundles of laces, exquisitely 



Ceylon s Spicy Breezes 85 

wrought grass-cloth dress and waist pat- 
terns, and trays of jewels which they spread 
out before you as you sit lazily in your 
steamer chair and barter, bargain and buy 
to your heart 's content. 

And such a sliding scale of prices makes 
your arithmetic fairly dizzjl Asking the 
price of a thing is merely opening the con- 
versation, as someone has said. These 
shrewd and wily merchants of the Far East 
are guided in their dealings solely by the 
rule of greed which extracts every fraction 
of a rupee that you will pay. The best time 
to buy is just before the ship sails — imme- 
diately after the natives are warned off deck 
by the ship's officers. This is the crucial 
moment — it is a case of now or never, and 
prices fall like magic. 

You are amazed to find that the handful 
of stones — shining sapphires, red rubies, 
milky moonstones, opals, turquoise and glit- 
tering gems of all sorts — precious and semi- 
precious — no one knows but an expert — 
may be had now for thirty shillings, where- 
as the original asking price was seven 
pounds sterling. The lovely Maltese lace 
handkerchief likewise has shrunk in value 
to a mere shilling, and your soul fairly 



86 Journeying Round the World 

shouts with glee as you shell out the shil- 
lings, rupees and pence to possess yourself 
of these jewels and laces of Ceylon. 

You will observe that the costumes of 
these people down here near the equator 
are noted chiefly for their simplicity and 
brevity. The children wear, for the most 
part, only their shining black skins and a 
bright smile — and they look like little 
ebony gods. The men wear their hair long 
and twisted into a tight knot at the nape of 
the neck, drawn back from the forehead by 
a huge tortoise-shell comb, like the circle 
comb of our grandmother's childish days, 
and which sets up like a halo. 

The fashionable costume for the women 
consists of a couple of yards of bright, plaid 
gingham, pinned around the waist, its scant 
folds falling to just below the knee. The 
waist is of white cotton cloth elaborately 
trimmed with coarse lace through the 
meshes of which the dark skin shows, em- 
phasizing the pattern of the lace. 

The popular native conveyance in Colom- 
bo is a two-wheeled cart drawn by a pair of 
small water buffaloes, funny little animals 
that look like diminutive cows with humps 
back of their necks. There are street 



Ceylon's Spicy Breezes 87 

pumps everywhere and the natives take 
their baths under them, splashing the water 
over their half clad bodies, and drinking 
from cocoanut shells. 



The Red Sea. 

We approached the Red Sea with con- 
siderable trepidation, not knowing just 
what to expect in the way of climate from 
the conflicting reports we had heard — dire 
tales of death, disease, and even insanity. 

"Of course you intend to sleep on deck 
in your steamer chair when we're in the Red 
Sea" ventured a nervous woman whose hus- 
band's aunt's neighbor had made the trip 
ten years ago. 

Another solemnly informed us that fre- 
quently the ship is compelled to turn 
around and go in the opposite direction for 
half an hour or so at a time, in order to 
catch the breeze from the southeast and 
give passengers a chance to gasp a few times 
and renew the supply of oxygen in their 
lungs. 

A dyspeptic looking man groaned feebly 
and remarked in a funereal tone that he had 
heard that passengers sometimes went 
quite insane from the awful heat and had to 
be guarded to prevent them from jumping 
overboard. 



The Red Sea 89 

Another fellow passenger laughed to 
scorn all these gloomy predictions and ad- 
vised us to get out our steamer rugs. He 
said that he had actually suffered from cold 
on previous trips when passing through 
this body of water which flows between two 
deserts. 

So you can see for yourself that we were 
uncertain as to what new terrors awaited 
us in this sea through which the hosts of 
Pharaoh passed. We reached Aden in the 
early morning and our ship lay there several 
hours awaiting the arrival of the mail 
steamer from Bombay. 

The most prominent feature of the land- 
scape at Aden is the town-clock which 
towers above the huddle of red-roofed build- 
ings, clinging like swallows' nests to the 
steep, rocky sides of the frowning cliffs 
which rise from the shore. Not a spear of 
grass or vegetation anywhere. A few 
sickly trees of straggling growth speak pa- 
thetically of effort to create artificial shade 
from the pitiless glare of the sun which 
scorches the grim rocks and the fortress- 
guarded port which forms the gateway to 
the Red Sea. 

Evidently there is a wag at Aden for we 



90 Journeying Round the World 

beheld such signs as "Keep Off: the Grass" 
and "Do Not Pick the Mowers" posted up 
here and there in the public square which 
faces the water front. Camels solemnly 
parade the single street hauling two- 
wheeled carts, and Aden possesses several 
auto-omnibuses which convey tourists to 
the famous water tanks discovered some 
sixty years ago, excavated out of solid rock, 
no one knows how many centuries gone. 
Some say in King Solomon's time. The pur- 
pose of these huge reservoirs, it is supposed, 
was to store water to supply the inhabitants 
of Aden and a pessimist on board remarked 
that, according to report handed down from 
generation to generation, it has never 
rained in Aden since Solomon's reign. 

An Australian editor however, who went 
out to inspect the tanks, told me that he had 
heard it rumored that actual records show it 
does rain in Aden once in seven years, and 
some of the oldest inhabitants declare that 
on one occasion the lapse between drouth 
and rain was but five years. 

'At six o'clock we sailed away with over 
two hundred enormous sacks of Indian mail 
stored away in our hold, transferred from 
the Bombay steamer. India must keep up 



The Red Sea 91 

quite a lively correspondence with England. 

If it hadn't been for that "following 
wind" our passage of the Red Sea would 
have been most comfortable. But that 
breeze pursued us — it never faced us — and 
not a breath of it did we get. However, this 
zephyr from the parched Arabian desert fol- 
lowed us but one day out of the three which 
the trip consumed, and with this exception 
we were as cool and comfortable as when 
sailing in the Indian Ocean. 

We entered the Suez Canal late in the 
afternoon and at sunset passed the former 
residence of De Lesseps, the great French 
engineer to whose genius this waterway con- 
necting Europe with the Orient is due. The 
once handsome home is quite deserted now. 
It stands on a height overlooking the canal 
and commanding a superb view. 

Every steamer that passes through the 
canal must pay high into the thousands for 
the privilege. There is a toll of two dollars 
per capita for every man, woman and child 
on board, beside the tonnage tax which, at 
a rate not less than $1.50 per ton, runs up 
into the tidy sum of $15,000 for a 10,000-ton 
ship. That the Suez Canal has paid almost 
from the start goes without saying. Frank 



92 Journeying Round the World 

G. Carpenter, the well-known traveler and 
newspaper correspondent, says: 

"The last time I traversed the canal the 
steamer took eighteen hours and the charge 
for the ship was just about $500 per hour. 
The stock is as high as anything sold in Wall 
street. The bulk of it is owned by Great 
Britain, and although the French nominalty 
control the canal its real direction comes 
from John Bull. As it is now, no large block 
of the common stock appears to be owned by 
any individual or corporation or other 
government. John Bull is said to have a 
large majority of the whole, and the next 
shareholder in point of ownership is a 
Frenchman who has only a little more than 
1500 shares out of the whole 400,000. As I 
remember it the British government bought 
176,000 shares of the old Khedive, Ismail 
Pasha, getting the same through a loan of 
$20,000,000, which was made by the Roths- 
childs originally, and finally turned over to 
the British government. That investment 
of $20,000,000 was one of the best John Bull 
has ever made. The stock which he has 
bought is now worth more than $150,000,000, 
and it has paid $60,000,000 or $70,000,000 in 
dividends." 



Cairo, City of Mosques, Min- 
arets and Mosquitos. 

As your train speeds away from Port Said 
out into the desert toward Cairo the clear, 
dry air comes as the breath of life to your 
nostrils after the sticky, humid heat of the 
Red Sea and the equatorial regions. After 
passing Ismalia on the Suez Canal, you leave 
the dry desert and your way lies through 
fields of golden grain, fertile meadows and 
growing gardens. Rows of stately eucalyp- 
tus trees, hedges of scarlet geraniums, ole- 
ander trees and moonflowers clambering 
riotously over palings surrounding the little 
railway stations bear striking resemblance 
to the vegetation of our own Southern Cali- 
fornia. 

It is a four hours' ride from Port Said to 
Cairo — city of mosques and minarets, mum- 
mies and museums, camels and cafes, of the 
red fez and the mellow skies. The nights 
were cool and comfortable when we were 
there in late May, but at mid-day the ther- 
mometer climbed to eighty-seven degrees, 
and from that hour until three o'clock busi- 

93 



94 Journeying Round the World 

ness is practically suspended. Stores and 
offices close and apparently all Cairo sleeps ; 
the camels doze in the shade and the Arab 
shop-keepers frequently lie, stretched at 
full length, in the doorways of their bazaars. 

Carlo is afflicted with swarms of flies and 
mosquitoes, and no effort seems to be made 
to exclude them from buildings by means of 
screens. They wander in and out at their 
own sweet will. The beds in the hotels are 
provided with mosquito bars of fine netting 
which fall in ample folds about your couch, 
affording effectual protection while you 
sleep, providing you can dodge under when 
the mosquito isn't looking — otherwise he 
will accompany you and in the morning you 
will discover that he has been there from the 
print of his teeth in sundry and numerous 
places on your anatomy. Unlike the Jersey 
mosquito, the Cairo variety does not buzz: 
he is small; his bite is mild and modest, but 
nevertheless irritating. 

There is a strange incongruous mingling 
of the modern and the ancient in this quaint 
old city of some 700,000 souls. You dream 
of the old Bible pictures you used to studv 
on Sunday afternoons when you were a child, 
as you watch the water-carriers going about 



Cairo, City of Mosques 95 

the streets with jugs poised on their heads, 
or carrying a sheepskin filled with the water 
of the Nile. You notice mysteriously veiled 
Egyptian women slipping silently through 
the streets, and you see donkeys, their necks 
decorated with strings of gay beads, driven 
about attached to queer carts with huge 
wheels. There are bread sellers with big 
trays of the flat, round loaves resting on 
their heads; camels laden with freshly cut 
clover stride through the streets, and every- 
where, as twilight falls, are outdoor cafes, 
with tables spread on the pavements and 
surrounded with Arabs, Bedouins, Copts — a 
medley of Oriental nationalities — each clad 
in his native costume. Practically all Cairo 
dines in the open. At Shepheard's Hotel we 
took all our meals in a half-enclosed porch, 
and some dined outside under the trees. 
You are served by picturesque Arab waiters, 
clad in white Turkish trousers, with gay 
scarlet jackets, Oriental sashes, a red fez on 
the head, and pointed Morocco sandals on the 
feet. 

As you gaze at the ancient scenes in the 
streets of Cairo, suddenly a big motor car 
whizzes by, or a bicycle shoots past, or a 
modern victoria drawn by a splendid pair of 



96 Journeying Round the World 

Arabian horses dashes along, and you? 
dreams of ancient times are rudely dispelled 
and you are suddenly brought down to date, 
as it were. 

Among the fascinations of Cairo, especial- 
ly to feminine tourists, are the Turkish ba- 
zaars, where your soul revels in rich tapes- 
tries, glittering scarfs, scarabs, jewels and 
gorgeous Egyptian embroideries. The ba- 
zaar district, or "Mousky," extends for 
blocks along narrow streets with a mere 
ledge of a sidewalk. You are jostled by 
throngs of Arabs, Egyptians, veiled ladies, 
street peddlers, water carriers, donkeys, 
carriages, carts, goats and pedestrians of all 
classes and conditions of men and beasts. 

The bazaars and shops present a tawdry 
front — like the cheap department stores at 
home — and you wonder if any good can 
possibly come out of this part of Egypt, but 
if you push your way past the rolls of carpet, 
the piles of rugs, and the hanging draperies 
into the shadowy depths of the interior, you 
come at last to the choicest goods — folded 
away on shelves behind the counters or shut 
up in boxes, drawers and cases. You sit on 
a divan and the display begins. Lovely 
scarfs, like silvery snakes, beautifully em- 



Cairo, City of Mosques 97 

broidered fabrics crusted with glittering 
scales are held up for your admiration. All 
the shop-keepers either speak English them- 
selves or employ clerks who do. You know 
it was the Cairo merchant who placed over 
his door a sign reading: "I can speak English 
and understand American." 

The best bazaars maintain a fixed price, 
and no amount of bantering moves the mer- 
chant. "Not one piastre less" is his slogan, 
and no sort of argument, persuasion or 
threat can move him to alter that fixed price. 

"I'll give you one pound for these," said 
Peggy, as she piled up a beaded Egyptian 
scarf and a couple of embroidered pillow 
tops. 

"One pound, sixpence," politely cor- 
rected the merchant. 

"No — just one pound even — five dollars 
American money" persisted Peggy with true 
Yankee thrift — "that's only throwing off 
twelve cents." 

But the merchant was obdurate. "Not a 
single half piastre less. It is our fixed price" 
he reiterated. Peggy was as independent as 
he was determined and so the bargain fell 
through — for that day. Next morning 
Peggy sent an ambassador to buy the goods, 



98 Journeying Round the World 

thereby maintaining her dignity and secur- 
ing the coveted merchandise. 

The zoological gardens at Cairo have a per- 
fect menagerie in captivity — a regular Bar- 
num-Ringling-Forepaugh show combined. 
No trouble to keep up an animal exhibit in 
Africa. Just go out in the jungles and catch 
snakes or lasso lions, giraffes, tigers, ele- 
phants — any sort of animals you want. 

In the great museum you will see more 
mummies, relics and prehistoric wonders 
than you ever dreamed of. Preserved Phar- 
oahs abound and you will feel younger than 
you ever did before in your life — positively 
childish — as you gaze on their ancient, mum- 
mified features. You are doubly impressed 
too with the fact that "there's nothing new 
under the sun" when you notice the leather- 
tired wheels of an old chariot, dating back 
almost B. C. — same style as our modern rub- 
ber tires. 

"Well just look at that log cabin patch- 
work, will you?" exclaimed Peggy as she 
pointed to an exhibit a thousand or two years 
old in a glass case. Sure enough ! There it 
was — same pattern our grandmothers ori- 
ginated ( ?) half a century ago. 

You will want to spend one day visiting 



Cairo, City of Mosques 99 

the citadel, the mosque of Sultan Hassam 
and of Mohammed Pasha. Almost every 
guide has a different story to tell, and in 
most instances sacred and profane history 
are strangely mixed with myths and fairy 
tales, but each account is entertaining if not 
strictly authentic. 

"This, ladies and gentlemen," rattled on 
Mohammed Ahmed, our guide, "is the 
mosque built by Sultan Hassam over five 
hundred years ago from granite taken from 
the pyramids. It cost him five hundred 
sovereigns each and every day during the 
three years of its construction, and when it 
was completed he caused the hands of the 
architects to be cut off so that the mosque 
could never be duplicated." 

The principal object in life among these 
Egyptian ancients appears to have been the 
rearing of mosques and monuments to per- 
petuate their memory after death, and a real 
rivalry existed as to which could do the most 
original and unusual thing. 

We came to another — a magnificent mos- 
que which crowns a height overlooking the 
entire city, and built of solid alabaster. 

"This," said Mohammed, "is the famous 



100 Journeying Round the World 

mosque built by Mohammed Pasha, the first 
Khedive who ruled over Egypt." 

The interior is grand and beautiful be- 
yond description. The huge dome-like roof 
rises over an unpillared and apparently 
unsupported oval auditorium of tremendous 
size and absolutely devoid of any furnish- 
ings save the rich, crimson Persian velvet 
Carpets on the floor and the splendid chande- 
liers glittering with hundreds of prisms 
which catch and reflect the light of row upon 
row of great electric arc lights which en- 
circle the interior. 

Only once a year, when the present Khe- 
dive comes to worship, is this mosque illumi- 
nated and thrown open to the general public 
— otherwise you must visit it in the daytime 
and let your imagination supply the magni- 
ficent vision of lights which flood the whole 
with a brilliant glory. 

In a room at one side is the splendid 
marble sarcophagus of Mohammed Pasha 
which we gaze at through the carved aper- 
tures of the partition which separates it from 
the main rotunda of the mosque. 

Egypt is the land of the fez. All the men 
wear the red fez with its black tassel, and 
the fierce Cairo sun beats upon their 






Cairo, City of Mosques 101 

swarthy faces, unprotected by hat brim, till 
you wonder how they endure it, Neverthe- 
less, they look picturesque in their cardinal 
caps and full Turkish trousers. 



Passing the Pyramids. 

You approach the Pyramids from Cairo 
by trolley — which sort of knocks the poetry 
out of the proposition at the first stroke and 
reduces it to prose. It seems almost uncanny 
to journey to these ancient piles by so 
modern a method and you wonder, rather 
uneasily, what the Pharaohs would say. 

You spin along for seven or eight miles 
through an avenue luxuriantly lined with 
graceful lubek trees, which resemble our 
American locusts. When about half way out 
you catch your first glimpse of the grim, 
gaunt monuments rising from the rim of the 
desert. 

Like most celebrated objects, the pyra- 
mids are disappointing at first glance — per- 
haps because you expect so much — but as 
you draw nearer you are more and more im- 
pressed with their magnitude, and in the end 
you are thoroughly thrilled. 

The moment you step from the car you 
are surrounded by a throng of dragomen 
and donkey-boys, all clamoring for " back- 
sheesh" and patronage. Our guide vigor- 

102 



Passing the Pyramids 1 03 

ously plied his stick right and left, as if he 
were fighting a swarm of bees, and quickly 
negotiated for camels, for we were deter- 
mined to do the proper stunt and ride the 
hurricane deck of these ships of the desert. 

My particular beast rejoiced in the kingly 
name of Rameses I. He had a three-cor- 
nered patch — exactly the shape of a pyra- 
mid — on the tattered and seamy skin of his 
long neck. However, it had been neatly 
darned and felled down so it did not inter- 
fere seriously with the majestic and dignified 
appearance of Rameses. I observed also 
that he had that same half-querulous, half- 
sardonic smile which someone has mentioned 
as invariably curling the upper lip of the 
camel — a sort of scornful curve that makes 
you feel as if he were laughing at you. 

"Is — is — he — gentle?" I cautiously asked 
the Arab in charge. 

"Oh yes, Madame, dis dromedary, he be- 
long to de Sheik of de pyramids" was the re- 
assuring reply as he made a hissing sound to 
indicate to Rameses that he was expected to 
come down to earth. He tapped him gently 
at .the same time on the nose, and Rameses 
began to undouble. 

He folded up like a patent jackknif e. First 



104 Journeying Round the World 

he took his front legs down in sections, 
groaning dismally all the time, and then, by 
a series of gradual evolutions, his forward 
mast, so to speak, came within hailing dis- 
tance. After that he arranged his rear by 
a similar performance till his whole hurri- 
cane deck was within climbing reach. 

The Arab seized me about the waist and 
gently hoisted me to Barneses' hump. With 
chattering teeth, and chills chasing up and 
down my spinal column, I settled myself in 
the saddle, desperately grasping both its 
horns while the Arab placed my foot in the 
stirrup. 

"Don't let him get up yet" I begged as I 
breathed a prayer to Allah, "Hold onto him 
— I 'm not ready. ' ' 

"Lean forward" was the stern command, 
and I convulsively clutched Rameses' 
scarred and seamed neck, shut my eyes 
tight, and prepared for the worst. I heard 
that mysterious hissing sound, and simul- 
taneously I began to rise in the world. I 
recollect a dim, shuddering sense of sweep- 
ing through the air at an angle of forty-five 
degrees, of hearing a voice say, "Now lean 
forward," of being tossed higher yet and in 
a distinctly opposite direction as Barneses 



Passing the Pyramids 1 05 

unfolded his hind legs and stood upright. I 
felt myself moving through space with a 
gentle, rocking motion, and when I had 
courage to open my eyes I beheld below me 
the landscape and the diminutive figures of 
Arabs and countless donkey boys yelling at 
and pelting Rameses in the endeavor to 
induce him to move faster, but he continued 
to plod majestically along with me perched 
on his hump. 

The other members of my party had suc- 
cessfully mounted the relatives of Rameses 
and we made a rather imposing procession 
as we swung chaotically past the pyramids 
and out beyond the sphinx. 

"What happened to her nose?" asked 
Peggy, indicating the olfactory organ of this 
stone lady as we gazed at her lofty features. 

"Emporer Napoleon, he knock it off," was 
the solemn response of the dragoman. "He 
very bad man. He use mosques for stables. ' ' 

In defense of this libelous slander of the 
great French general it is but justice to ob- 
serve that the elements are quite likely re- 
sponsible for the snubbed nose of the sphinx, 
for wind and weather affect first the most 
prominent features of these stone monu- 



106 Journeying Round the World 

ments. The various interpretations given 
by different dragomen are interesting and 
diversifying. 



The Port of Palestine. 

We sailed from Port Said at 4 o'clock one 
afternoon across a corner of the Mediter- 
ranean to Jaffa — the ancient Joppa — which 
is the southern port of Palestine, arriving 
there at dawn next morning. 

Nowhere in all our travels, did we meet 
with such a public reception as at Jaffa. It 
was barely sunrise when our ship dropped 
anchor before the rocky and threatening en- 
trance to the Holy Land, and in no time the 
decks of the little steamer were literally 
swarming with a motley multitude of Arabs, 
Syrians, Philistines, Turks, Moabites, Ju- 
deans, Cook's guides and every Oriental 
nation, all jabbering and gesticulating and 
crowding about, eager to secure our patron- 
age in the landing boats. 

Many of the passengers were not yet out 
of their cabins, but the curious collection of 
yelling, struggling humanity crowded the 
passages and assembled in front of closed 
cabin doors ready to seize the victim when 
he should appear. They persisted in their 
attentions, and although we told them in 

107 



108 Journeying Round the World 

every language we could command, and also 
by pantomime, that we were not yet ready to 
go ashore, that we had not breakfasted, that 
as the steamer would lie there all day and 
the train for Jerusalem did not leave till 
afternoon there was no possible reason for 
such unseemly haste — it was all in vain. 

They talked some more, and then they ges- 
ticulated a lot, and then, when we remained 
obdurate, they sat down on the floor, or 
leaned against the deck railing, or pasted 
themselves against the walls— and waited, 
persistently, patiently, and steadfastly. We 
ignored their very presence — and were re- 
minded of it by an occasional touch on the 
arm, or pull of the dress when they would 
point insinuatingly to the row boats lined up 
against the steamer's side. 

We had read and heard of the perils of 
landing at Jaffa before we left home. We 
had been told about the swaying rope ladders 
down which we would have to descend from 
the steamer to the rocking egg-shells below 
manned by brawny Arabs. We had been in- 
formed about the old lady who had died from 
seasickness while the steamer tossed there 
for three days waiting for the waves to still 



The Port of Palestine 1 09 

sufficiently to permit passengers to embark 
in the landing boats. 

Therefore we were prepared for the worst. 
I had left my precious aluminum typewriter 
safely stored in the custom house at Port 
Said, fearing the effects of a salt water bath 
on its mechanism. We had arrayed our- 
selves in rain coats, and we wore rubbers. 

It happened however, that we were like 
a very small man with a very large breath 
trying to blow out a candle that wasn't 
lighted — for we met with no adventures. We 
quietly walked down the steamer stairs, 
stepped into a big rowboat, and were 
swiftly pulled ashore over a sea so smooth 
that scarcely a ripple wrinkled its surface. 
Nothing more thrilling happened than the 
dropping overboard of Peggy's parasol, 
which slipped out of her hand, 

Nevertheless, from the well authenticated 
tales of other travelers, I have reason to be- 
lieve that we were especially favored by 
Providence. The big, grim, seaweed-covered 
rocks which rise menacingly from the water, 
giving but a single narrow gateway for the 
boats to pass through, indicate how perilous 
the passage would be in rough weather. 
Speaking from the standpoint of an Amer- 



1 1 Journeying Round the World 

ican, I wonder why the government over 
there does not put down some dynamite and 
blow up those rocks and thus form a safe 
harbor. 

Jaffa is picturesquely situated on ground 
that rises abruptly from the shore and over- 
looks the sparkling waters of the Mediter- 
ranean. It is full of Bible associations — as 
are all places in Palestine. The best possible 
guide to the Holy Land is your Bible. If 
you do not know it well, you miss the sacred 
sentiment of the journey as well as its au- 
thoritative history. It is here at Jaffa you 
recall that a thousand years before the birth 
of Christ, Hiram, King of Tyre, shipped to 
this ancient port of Joppa the cedar wood 
from Lebanon to build Solomon's temple at 
Jerusalem. You stand upon the flat roof of 
the house located on the spot where Simon 
the tanner lived when Peter had his famous 
vision; you visit the tomb of Dorcas en- 
circled by orange orchards. 

The train from Jaffa to Jerusalem runs 
at a speed of a mile every five minutes so you 
have ample time to view the scenery. You 
cross the plain of Sharon, its fields gay with 
wild flowers, and you recall that it was in 
this valley that the flower of chivalry, the 



The Port of Palestine 1 1 1 

gallant Crusaders, fought. Yonder, your 
guide points out Timnath, where Samson set 
lire to the Philistines' corn, and a little 
farther on is the cave where he hid after De- 
lilah the first woman barber that history re- 
cords — cut his hair. 

Passing the fertile plains, the train climbs 
higher into the heart of the hills, winding 
through picturesque gorges and crossing 
the boundaries of the land of the Philistines 
into Judea. You note the stony character 
of the soil. Such a crop of rocks and stones 
you never beheld. The whole landscape for 
miles and miles, looks like the rocky bed of 
a river with no sign of vegetation anywhere, 
save here and there a little patch of soil 
where grain is growing. In the country all 
roundabout Jerusalem you observe this and 
you understand how apt was the illustration 
of the Great Teacher when He spoke of seed 
falling among stones and withering away. 
Indeed, as you travel through Palestine you 
are more and more impressed with the sim- 
plicity of His teachings, and realize how He 
drew His most powerful parables and illus- 
trations from the familiar scenes which His 
disciples beheld every day. There are more 
blind people in Jerusalem than in any other 



1 1 2 Journeying Round the World 

place I have seen and the miracle of healing 
this affliction was therefore only another in- 
stance of the practical teachings of the 
Savior of mankind. The glaring light fall- 
ing on the barren ground and stony soil of 
rock and limestone, the constant clouds of 
dust filling the air, and the crowded and 
filthy conditions of living all tend toward 
eye disease. 

On our way up the steep hills just outside 
the walls of Jerusalem are fields of thistles, 
and not far away, orchards of fig trees. 
How very natural for Jesus, as He walked 
that way with His disciples, to comment on 
the fact — "Can men grow figs of thistles'?" 
and also to call attention to the barren fig 
trees about. 

In the walls round about Jerusalem are 
numerous narrow doors known as the 
"needle's eye" where, in ancient times of- 
ficials were admitted at night after the gates 
were closed. You at once see how hard it 
would be for a camel to enter one of these 
gates — though not wholly impossible, if he 
meet two conditions — he must drop his load 
and bend the knees in order to enter in. You 
at once see the parallel of conditions laid by 



The Port of Palestine 1 1 3 

Christ upon the entrance to the kingdom of 
Heaven. 

You find, a new and modern Jerusalem 
built up outside the walls of the ancient city 
and you are perhaps surprised to find here 
the most comfortable and home-like hotel 
accommodations you have struck since leav- 
ing America. A German and his half dozen 
strong sons and daughters have kept this 
hostelry for years. The American Consul 
sits at a table near your own and you find 
the hotel thronged with American tourists. 
The fare is excellent and the price moderate. 

Nearly all the sacred spots connected with 
the birth, life and death of our Savior are 
covered with memorial churches. The sup- 
posed site of Calvary (which, by the way, is 
a disputed point, many Biblical scholars be- 
lieving that the Gordon Tomb and Golgotha 
hill near by is the actual spot where Chirst 
was crucified and buried, and which was dis- 
covered a few years ago by General Gordon) 
and the tomb are within the walls of the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which belongs 
to various sects — Mohammedans, Armen- 
ians and Roman Catholics — each of which 
has its particular spot in which to worship 
and so antagonistic is the ecclesiastical feel- 



1 1 4 Journeying Round the World 

ing that armed guards are stationed here 
and there, notably in the church at Bethle- 
hem which marks the spot where Christ was 
born. 

Every doorway in the Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre, leading to a sacred site, is cut so 
low in the stone wall that everyone, be he 
Jew, Gentile, Christian or heretic, is forced 
to bend the knee and bow the head in order 
to enter. You climb the steep stone steps to 
the site of Calvary, above which is suspended 
a life-sized painting of Christ on the cross. 
You put your eye to a small aperture and 
see, through a glass, a bit of granite which 
you are told is the top of Calvary. 

You bow your head and bend your knee to 
enter the enclosure of His tomb, covered 
with alabaster, where you find devout pil- 
grims kneeling and pressing their lips to the 
anointing stone which symbolizes the spot 
where His body was anointed for burial. 

Without the church, in the square, open 
court, squatted on the stone floor, are bead- 
sellers, with candles and rosaries, and 
natives sit smoking their curious pipes — 
"nargillas," they are called — the pipe being 
connected by a long rubber tube with a long- 
necked bottle half filled with water. The 



The Port of Palestine 1 1 5 

nicotine passes through the water which 
renders it less harmful, our guide explained. 
The picturesque smokers sit, Turk fashion, 
drawing tranquilly on these curious pipes 
and watching the water bubble in the bottle 
into which, with a curious artistic sense, 
they have placed a few flowers — carnations 
or roses. 

The most superb view of Jerusalem is 
from the Mount of Olives, whither we went 
one afternoon by donkey back, going outside 
the city walls and climbing by a circuitous 
route to the heights of Olivet, from the other 
side of which burst upon our vision a view 
extending over miles and miles of Palestine 
and including the Dead Sea and the River 
Jordan — more than twenty miles away — and 
the Moabite mountains beyond in all their 
lovely blue lights and shadows. Turning 
toward the city you behold Jerusalem, and 
like a flash there comes to your mind Christ's 
words of sorrow as He gazed over the proud, 
beautiful city and said: "Oh, Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered 
thy children together, as a hen doth gather 
her -brood under her wings, and ye would 
not." 

Going down from Olivet, you may return 



1 1 6 Journeying Round the World 

to Jerusalem by way of the Garden of Geth- 
semane and thence climb the steep hill to the 
Jews' Wailing Place where every Friday 
afternoon Jews and Rabbis congregate to 
wail over the loss of Jerusalem. It is a pa- 
thetic scene — the mournful cries of old men, 
middle-aged men, and even little boys 
brought there by their fathers to take part 
in the dismal ceremony, wailing and knock- 
ing their heads against the wall as they pray 
for the restoration of Jerusalem. 

A writer in the Travel Handbook says: 
" People talk of the noise, dirt, and squalor 
of Jerusalem, and it may be true enough as 
applied to the lanes and bazaars of the Mos- 
lem quarter, which are as filthy and malo- 
dorous as those of Tangier or Constantin- 
ople. But there are parts of it which sug- 
gest the purlieus of an old cathedral or uni- 
versity town. Cool, paved lanes, running 
past quiet convent gardens, a yellow wall, 
with its crumbling tower and over-branching 
palm, silhouetted against the intense blue of 
the sky, stretches of lonely waste, overgrown 
cactus and prickly pear, and surrounded by 
high-walled buildings with quaint, fretted 
wooden lattices, glimpses of cloisters with 
faded Byzantine pictures on the walls, — all 



The Port of Palestine 1 1 7 

these details go to make up the wistful 
charm which, scarcely felt perhaps at first, 
grows on one more and more as one surren- 
ders to its influence." 

The most beautiful building in all Jerusa- 
lem is the Mosque of Omar with its dome of 
exquisite blue tiles, where you will be 
escorted by a representative of your own 
government and a Turkish officer. 



Jerusalem to Jericho. 

If you do not believe that Jericho is a hard 
road to travel, just you try it — as we did, on 
a day when the thermometer at Jericho 
registered 124 degrees in the shade — and 
there wasn't much shade either, except un- 
der the boughs of the great oleander tree 
that grows in the courtyard of the hotel. 

The whole twenty miles from Jerusalem 
to Jericho lies over the stoniest, rockiest 
road imaginable, much of it cut through 
solid limestone. It winds over steep hills 
and down declivities into deep valleys that 
intervene in the wilderness between the two 
cities. You make a drop of half a mile all 
told before you reach the shore of the Dead 
Sea — that stagnant body of bitter water that 
lies in the lowest rift of the earth's crust 
lighted by the sun. Its waters are so im- 
pregnated with salt that if you evaporate 
four bottles of it you will get one bottle of 
salt. Under the rays of the hot Assyrian sun 
it is estimated that 10,000,000 tons of water 
go up by evaporation every twenty-four 
hours. 

118 



Jerusalem to Jericho 1 1 9 

The morning sun was just touching the 
towers and domes of Jerusalem as our car- 
riage, drawn by three horses, drove away 
from the hotel and skirted the walls of the 
city, turning off near the Tomb of Absalom 
and so across the slope of Mount Olivet to 
Bethany where our guide pointed out the 
site of the home of Mary and Martha and 
Lazarus. We corkscrewed down the steep 
descent past the Apostles ' Spring, so named 
because it is the spot where Jesus and His 
apostles used to stop on the weary journey 
from Jerusalem to Jericho — the last spring 
of pure water in the wilderness that 
stretches between. 

The trip to Jericho occupies five hours, 
and although somewhat tedious, is full of 
keenest interest. Here and there, hidden 
away in the cleft of the hills, or in the deep 
canyons that gash the wilderness, are lonely 
monasteries, their dome-like towers rising 
like solitary temples in the waste of solitude. 
The wayside inn, on the site where the Good 
Samaritan rescued "that certain man who 
went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and 
fell among thieves" is the half-way resting 
place for modern pilgrims crossing the 
wilderness. 



120 Journeying Round the World 

You meet bands of Russian pilgrims going 
up to Jerusalem — men, women and children 
— riding donkeys and on foot, and you pass 
groups of armed Arabs and Bedouins driving 
herds of camels or donkeys. Occasionally 
you come to a small oasis in the desert of the 
wilderness, where a typical Bible harvest 
scene is spread before your eyes — men and 
women cutting the grain with sickles and 
binding it into sheaves. 

The road at last plunges precipitously 
down a steep incline into Jericho and your 
carriage rolls over a modern cement bridge 
crossing the bed of a stream. You are glad 
to stop for rest and refreshment at a Jericho 
hotel before pressing on to the Dead Sea and 
River Jordan some six miles farther. You 
are taken to that spot on the banks of the 
Jordan where Jesus was baptized by John 
and you go to the site of the ancient city of 
Jericho, a couple of miles or so beyond the 
modern city, and see fragments of the walls 
around which Joshua and his hosts marched. 

We spent the night in Jericho — a prac- 
tically sleepless one on account of the great 
heat and a high wind which arose about mid- 
night and blew with great violence. We 
arose at two a. m., breakfasted, and started 



Jerusalem to Jericho 121 

on the return trip to Jerusalem at three 
o'clock in order to accomplish the hardest 
part of the journey before the sun rose. 

One afternoon we drove from Jerusalem 
to Bethlehem — about an hour's ride — pass- 
ing the site of the tomb of Rachel where 
"she was buried in the way to Ephrath, 
which is Bethlehem." It is said that there 
is no doubt whatever that this site, which is 
revered by Christians and Moslems, as well 
as by Jews, is the scene of the touching death 
of Rachel. We remember too, that it was 
in the surrounding fields that Ruth gleaned 
after the reapers, and it was through them 
that the sorrow-stricken Naomi returned. It 
was upon one of these hills that David kept 
his father's sheep, and it was among the 
glens and valleys that first rang out those 
glorious Psalms which have echoed down 
through the centuries. It was here, on these 
hills, that the shepherds, while watching 
their flocks by night, received the " tidings 
of great joy," and it was here that took 
place the supreme event which made Beth- 
lehem a household word. It may be that 
over this same road you are traveling, the 
three wise men journeyed, following the 
star in the east that should show the birth- 
place of the Savior of the world. 



122 Journeying Round the World 

The site of the inn and the cave where 
Christ was born is covered by the Church of 
the Nativity. We were given lighted tapers 
and conducted down the stone steps leading 
to the Chapel of the Nativity. A silver star 
marks the spot where the Savior was born, 
above which sixteen silver lamps are per- 
petually burning. A little beyond, and at 
one side, is the supposed site of the manger 
where He was laid. You find armed soldiers 
constantly on guard to prevent open war- 
fare between different religious factions. A 
service was going on in the church when we 
were there and a procession of singers 
entered the chapel, kneeling and burning in- 
cense before the sacred shrines. 



Europe, the World's Playground 

Back to Port Said from Palestine and a 
swift three-day trip across the Mediter- 
ranean to Brindisi in the heel of Italy's boot 
brought us into Europe. 

"No wonder St. Paul sent for his over- 
coat," observed Peggy, as she shivered and 
snuggled into her steamer rug as we swept 
past the Island of Crete in a stiff gale that 
churned the blue waters of the Mediter- 
ranean into a rolling sea. We were on board 
the fast mail ship " Osiris," and she sped 
over the waves like a great white bird. 

It is a full day's ride by rail from Brindisi 
to Naples and the road follows the line of the 
ancient Appian "Way over which Horace fol- 
lowed in the famous journey so graphically 
described in one of his satires. In those days 
Brindisi was an important place, for it was 
the Roman point of departure for Greece 
and the Far East. 

After the stony, bare and treeless plains 
of Palestine, the fertile fields and vineyards, 
the orchards and gardens of sunny Italy 

123 



124 Journeying Round the World 

seemed like a modern Eden. Wild poppies 
stained the meadows blood-red. Lilacs, 
Cherokee roses and lovely wild flowers car- 
peted the landscape and it was literally fres- 
coed with grape vines festooned from tree to 
tree. Every foot of land is intensively cul- 
tivated. Vineyards and olive orchards climb 
precipitous hillsides, reach down into can- 
yons and stretch over miles and miles of level 
land. You see orange orchards with grape 
vines trellised from tree to tree, and pota- 
toes, corn and beans — regular succotash 
gardens — growing between. 

The railway has a splendid roadbed, and 
the express train keeps up a rattling rate of 
speed, darting through tunnels as you near 
Naples and coming out to lovelier vistas and 
more charming views each time. The chief 
glory of Naples is its bay which dents the 
Italian shore in a deep horseshoe with lovely 
Sorrento perched on the steep cliffs at one 
end of the curve, and the Island of Capri 
and its famous Blue Grotto lying just with- 
in the outstretched arms of land. You visit 
Pompeii — that wonderful dead city which 
has been designated as the most amazing 
spectacle in all Italy. As we wandered 
through the silent streets between stark, 



Europe, World's Playground 125 

staring walls on a bright June day, one could 
never dream that the fair Vesuvius looming 
against the blue sky with never a cloud or 
vapor veiling its face smiling in the summer 
sun could belch forth such fire and flood of 
lava streams and work such awful destruc- 
tion. 

In Rome you are simply saturated with 
museums and mosaics, pictures and paint- 
ings, churches, cathedrals, cloisters and cata- 
combs, frescoes and facades and friezes, 
shrines, basilicas and tombs — in short with 
the art, antiquity and architecture of this 
fascinating city. You get to feeling posi- 
tively moldy, and musty, and cobwebby, for 
most things date from the fifteenth century 
and run back from that to the days of Nero. 

You can go to a different church in Rome 
every one of the 365 days in a year, and then 
there will be fifteen that you have not seen. 
Of these 380 churches, all but five are Roman 
Catholic. Just the fountains of Rome are 
worthy of a chapter to themselves. They 
play on every square and corner. All Rome 
is not an antique ruin however. Not far 
from a fragment of the wall built by Marcus 
Aurelius in the year 70 A. D. is the most 
modern and down-to-date tiled street tunnel, 



126 Journeying Round the World 

through which double-decked trolley cars 
spin beneath its vaulted ceiling set solidly 
with white porcelain tiles. 

Florence, sitting like a fair queen on the 
banks of the Arno, with picturesque hills ris- 
ing on all sides, is truly the Mower City of 
Italy. She holds you captive by her many- 
sided charms — her wealth of literary associa- 
tions, her great art galleries, her fascinating 
gardens and delightful villas. 

Venice, with its wonderful sea lanes, its 
gondolas gliding like great black swans un- 
der the picturesque bridges; its palaces of 
curious architecture; its festa days and gala 
nights, is the dream city of all Europe. 

Milan, with its marvelous cathedrals and 
its famous fresco of The Last Supper, lies in 
your pathway from Venice to the Italian 
lakes which lie like scattered turquoises 
among the enchanting mountains of North- 
ern Italy, and through them is the gateway 
into Switzerland — the Garden of the gods. 

When you visit Lucerne do not fail to go to 
the cathedral and hear the great organ 
played by a musician who is the greatest 
genius of his kind. Every afternoon at six 
o'clock an organ recital is given, and every 
tourist in Lucerne makes it a point to attend 



Europe, World's Playground 127 

at least once and always to remain quite to 
the end of the hour allotted, for the final 
number is "The Storm." By the wonderful 
harmonies you are literally carried on its 
wings. First the birds carol, then the wind 
rises, gradually growing into a tempest that 
shrieks and howls and whistles till you posi- 
tively shiver in your pew. Then the rain be- 
gins to fall, first a gentle patter, which in- 
creases to a perfect deluge and beats 
against the windows and pounds the roof. 
The thunder mutters and grows louder till 
it comes, crash after crash in deafening 
tones, and the quick, staccato flashes of light- 
ning play between the peals. Bye and bye 
the storm begins to die away, the rain grad- 
ually ceases, the rolls of thunder become less 
frequent, the wind sobs itself to sleep, the 
birds commence to chirp, and then to softly 
sing — and you awake from your musical 
trance to wonder at the genius which in- 
voked this mystic melody from the keys of 
an organ. 

Probably the aeroplane will eventually 
solve the problem of scaling the Alps, but in 
the meantime aerial navigators have not 
been asleep, and the latest device to date is 
that of swinging a huge basket that holds 



128 Journeying Round the World 

twenty people over the Grindelwald glacier, 
on a wire suspended from the Wetterhorn. 

From rolling in a 'riksha in Japan, teeter- 
ing in a sedan chair in Hong Kong, swaying 
on the back of a camel in Cairo, jolting 
donkey-back through the stony streets of 
Jerusalem, climbing the Alps by tram, by 
funicular, by cog-wheel, by rack-and-pinion 
railways, or floating in a gondola through 
the water-ways of Venice, this swinging out 
into space in a basket suspended on a wire 
cobweb rather beats them all for thrills. 

In Switzerland, mountain railways liter- 
ally gridiron the Alps. At night, from Lu- 
cerne, from Interlaken, or from any one of 
the dozens of resorts on these lovely Swiss 
lakes, you can see twinkling from the 
heights of the mountains around the lights 
of scores of hotels, topping some of the lofti- 
est peaks. 

The Swiss railways issue tickets good for 
fifteen or thirty days at greatly reduced 
rates, whereby the purchaser may travel 
continuously over any line of railway or 
steamers during that period. One may lit- 
erally live en route if he chooses, for there 
is no limit to the number of trips. The pho- 
tograph of the purchaser is pasted inside the 



Europe, World's Playground 129 

book-ticket as a means of identification, and 
the conductor or captain merely glances at 
it to make sure that the proper person is 
traveling on it. 

"This ticket cost me just nine dollars in 
our money," I heard an American remark 
on a steamer on Lake Brienz. "My wife 
has one like it and for fifteen days we have 
been traveling all over Switzerland." 

The Swiss people understand how to make 
their scenic attractions pay. Every gorge 
and waterfall has its price. It costs you half 
a franc to see the Trummelbach Falls at 
Lauterbrunnen, and a similar admission fee 
to gaze on the glories of the GKxrge of the 
Lutschine at Grindelwald. Our American 
Consul stated in a speech delivered at a ban- 
quet in Lucerne while we were there, that 
the greatest imports in Switzerland are 
Americans with their pockets full of money, 
and the greatest exports from the republic 
are these same Americans with empty 
purses. 

However, Americans are glad to pay the 
price, for it is well worth while to look upon 
these stupendous glories of nature. We 
entered Switzerland by way of the Italian 
Lakes, coming from Lake Como across to 



130 Journeying Round the World 

Lake Lugano on a funny little tram whose 
engine puffed and panted over the steep 
road that wound in and out among the moun- 
tains, giving us glimpses of the most charm- 
ing views. At Lugano we boarded the 
through express train for Lucerne, via the 
St. Gothard tunnel nine miles long, which 
we entered in sunshine and made our exit 
at the other end in a pouring rain — a condi- 
tion which the Swiss people told me always 
prevails — if the rain falls on one side of the 
tunnel, the sun is pretty sure to be shining 
on the other side. 

One is constantly tempted to deal in super- 
latives in speaking of the scenery along 
these picturesque routes through the heart 
of the Alps, or in crossing the Appennines 
from Florence to Venice where the railway 
passes through half a hundred tunnels in un- 
interrupted succession from the valley of the 
Arno to the fertile Tuscany plains. You 
swing from galleries, viaducts and bridges, 
and skirt embankments and precipices con- 
tinually. The railways of Italy and Switzer- 
land have a habit of burrowing underground, 
even when not piercing mountains, you will 
notice. The railway which enters Lucerne 
passes almost completely under the city and 



Europe, World's Playground 131 

around the head of the lake coming up to 
the surface on the other side. This is done 
to preserve the lovely lake front with its 
quay and wide promenade overhung with 
great horse chestnut trees. Here is a hint 
for American cities, many of which are made 
smoky and ugly by a network of railroad 
tracks across what might otherwise be a 
beauty spot. In foreign cities where natural 
beauty is appreciated, the railroads have 
the subway habit. 

When you visit Germany do not pass by 
Oberammergau, whether it be the year of 
the great Passion Play or not. Every sum- 
mer these wonderful peasant artists enact 
some sort of religious play, and the associa- 
tions and placid beauty of this village hidden 
away in the Bavarian Alps is well worth a 
visit. You will want to drive out to the 
castle at Linderhof where lived the mad 
King Ludwig, whose strange, sad history is 
so interwoven with these peasant people who 
idolized him. 

Nuremberg will fascinate you with its de- 
lightful, many-windowed roofs, its beautiful 
bridges, and fountains, and picturesque 
towers. Be sure and patronize the famous 
Bratwurst Grlocklein and eat weiners hot 



1 32 Journeying Round the World 

from the coals and real German sauer kraut, 
and imagine that Durer, and Visscher and 
their artist confreres of centuries ago whose 
portraits smile down upon you, are sitting 
there beside you at the queer little tables, 
as they did in the long ago. 

After you have traversed the length and 
breadth of Germany, have sailed down the 
castled Rhine and wandered through Hol- 
land and Belgium and through France and 
into gay Paris and have visited all the other 
European places your itinerary calls for, 
and you at length land on English soil, I 
venture to say that never in all the world be- 
fore has the mother tongue sounded so good 
to your American ears, in place of all this 
foreign chatter. It will seem good — un- 
speakably good — to be able to make your- 
self at once understood when you give di- 
rections about your baggage without the ef- 
fort of gesticulation, pantomime perform- 
ances and grappling with French, German, 
Italian and other unknown languages. 

My first impression of London as the train 
from Dover entered the suburbs was 
— chimneys. They seemed to protrude 
everywhere. Every house in London, large 
or small, has at least half a dozen chimneys 



Europe, World's Playground 133 

— tile-like affairs set in rows along the big, 
brick chimney that dominates the roof. 

I met an English woman in Paris who was 
kind enough to coach me a little in regard to 
her native city. 

" You'll have no difficulty in getting about 
in London" she assured me, "just ask the 
policemen. They always know everything 
and you'll find them very obliging and po- 
lite.'' 

She was quite right. The London police- 
man may not always be a scholar in the 
broad sense of the word, but he is invariably 
a gentleman, and his knowledge concerning 
the greatest city on earth is practically 
limitless. You usually find him standing on 
the stone oasis in the middle of the street 
crossing. He is a perfect autocrat when it 
comes to controlling street traffic. His up- 
lifted hand has power to bring to an abrupt 
halt an omnibus, a carriage, an automobile, 
a tram car, a pedestrian, an alderman, the 
Lord-Mayor, or the King's guard itself. 
There are only about 20,000 of these guard- 
ians of the public peace in London, and they 
manage to keep its 7,500,000 inhabitants in 
a tolerable state of safety. They guard a 



1 34 Journeying Round the World 

territory of some seven hundred square 
miles. 

It's rather appalling when you start out 
on your first tour of London to be told by 
your guide that it covers twenty miles from 
north to south, and seventeen miles from 
east to west, and that there is not a person 
living who can say that he has seen all of 
London, for no human being has yet accom- 
plished the job. There are as many people 
living in London as there are in all the Do- 
minion of Canada. Just the water mains of 
the city if stretched in a straight line end to 
end, would reach from there to New York 
and back again to Liverpool. If we could 
put all the water Londoners consume in a 
year into a canal two hundred feet wide and 
twenty feet deep, it would reach six hun- 
dred miles — as far as from Shanghai to 
Hankow, or from New York to Cleveland, 
or from San Diego to San Francisco. 

You will notice at once that London is 
left-handed. Posted up in the middle of all 
the principal streets in conspicuous places 
you will see signs reading "Keep to the 
left." All vehicles observe this rule and all 
passing pedestrians. The omnibuses halt on 
the left-hand corner also. 



Europe, World's Playground 135 

The parks are the lungs of London and 
there are more than a hundred of these 
breathing spots. You motor through Rich- 
mond Park when you go out to Hampton 
Court, following winding roads beneath the 
shade of great oaks a century old under 
which herds of deer are feeding. Beverly 
Brook flows through this splendid princi- 
pality of 22,000 acres which belongs to the 
crown and is the royal hunting ground. 

In Paris one is impressed with the me- 
morials to Napoleon Bonaparte, with his 
magnificent tomb under the golden dome of 
Des Invalides, and the numerous memorial 
monuments and arches placed in his honor 
along the parks and boulevards. In London 
you are continually reminded of great lit- 
erary lights — of Dickens and Thackeray, of 
George Eliot and Charles Reade, of Dr. 
Johnson and hosts of others. 

There's Piccadilly and Mayfair and Saf- 
fron Hill with its memories of Oliver Twist ; 
there's Disraeli's birthplace and Garrick's 
home, and Washington Irving 's "Little 
Britain"; there are the homes of Reynolds 
and Sir Isaac Newton; there are recollections 
of Nell Gwynne, of Swan Walk and Mr. 
Pepys of Vanity Fair, and there's the Old 



136 Journeying Round the World 

Curiosity Shop standing on a corner — now 
a picture shop where you go to prowl about. 
The old names of London streets are a 
study in themselves. Milton was born in 
Bread street, and Sir Thomas Moore close 
by in Milk street. There's Pudding Lane 
and Poultry street which opens into Duck- 
foot Lane. There's Leather street too, and 
this quaint old custom harks back to the 
time when it was the habit to name streets 
according to the business carried on in them. 
One knew exactly where the bakers and 
butchers and shoemakers were by the name 
of the street or lane. 



Money the World Around. 

Talk about the mysteries of the stock ex- 
change. They are as nothing compared with 
the reduction of our American dollars and 
dimes into yen, sen, rin and heaven knows 
what other denominations. 

There is always a rate of exchange ex- 
acted, and in the course of a journey 
through the Orient or through Europe 
where the money changes in every country 
you are surprised to see how much is eaten 
up in the mere exchange from one currency 
into another. The tale is told of a traveler 
who left Singapore with $100 Mexican as a 
surplus in his pocket and by the time he 
reached Peking the whole amount was re- 
duced to four dollars just by the mere 
matter of transition from the coin of one 
realm into that of another. 

Really one needs to be a fairly good 
arithmetician to travel the world around 
and keep accurate track of this conversion 
of dollars and cents into yen and sen, rupees 
and piastres, lira and francs, marks and 
pf ennige, shillings and pence. 

137 



1 38 Journeying Round the World 

When you reach Japan yon feel rather 
rich to find that one dollar of your money 
is worth two of theirs, and the same condi- 
tion prevails in China where the Mexican 
dollar is the standard. Down in Ceylon you 
reach the land of the rupee and you discover 
that it takes three of these silver coins about 
the size of our fifty-cent piece to make a dol- 
lar in our money. Your hotel bills in Cairo 
will be made out with the piastre — its value 
is five cents in our money — as a basis. At 
first glance you are rather appalled to see 
the total summed up in three figures, but re- 
assured when you realize that it is in 
nickels and not dollars. 

In the Orient, prices at the best hotels 
average about $3.50 per day, United States 
money, while at excellent European pen- 
sions and some of the most comfortable 
hotels you may find good accommodations 
at from $1.50 to $2 per day. In Jerusalem 
we found a delightful hotel at $2.50 per 
day. In the best hotels in Shanghai there 
is a uniform price for laundry — five sen 
(two and one-half cents) per article, be it a 
handkerchief, an embroidered petticoat, or 
a pleated shirt waist — and it is beautifully 
done. On the contrary, I paid in Cairo 



Money, the World Around 139 

twenty-four piastres ($1.20) for the laun- 
dering of a shirt waist — and it was very 
indifferently done, limp and quite guiltless 
of starch, and from its general appearance 
of lassitude and frailty I suspected that the 
washboard used was the bed of stones on 
the borders of the Nile. 

In China you never know from one day 
to the next exactly what your good Amer- 
ican dollar is worth, for the rate of ex- 
change varies from day to day. Every 
morning there is posted up in a conspic- 
uous place in your hotel a bulletin stating 
the rate of exchange for that day. It is 
well, before you start out on a shopping 
trip in the Orient, to go to a bank, steam- 
ship company or reliable tourist agency 
and get your bills of large denomination 
changed into small coins to avoid the nec- 
essity of accepting much change in the 
shops, otherwise you run a risk of getting 
a lot of counterfeit money. 

And this matter of counterfeit money is 
one that you must watch the world around. 
When we reached Naples, Italy was strug- 
gling with a mass of counterfeit coins in 
the shape of the 20-centime piece (equal 
to four cents United States money) and 



140 Journeying Round the World 

which corresponds in their ratio to the 
American nickel. The Italian government 
had issued a quantity of these coins to the 
value of 10,000,000 francs some years 
before, and it had been discovered that be- 
tween 30,000,000 and 40,000,000 francs 
were then in circulation in the shape of 
these coins — all the overplus being coun- 
terfeit. An edict was issued recalling all 
these coins and published in the Italian 
papers, but tourists not familiar with that 
language or the coins were naturally the 
sufferers, as the natives " unloaded" those 
20-centime pieces without mercy on the 
strangers within their gates. I had some- 
thing like three dozen of them on hand 
when we awoke to the game, but I managed 
to get rid of them by judicious shopping, 
tendering two or three of the suspicious 
coins for each bill of goods and utterly re- 
fusing to accept the goods at all unless the 
coins were recognized at their full value as 
part payment. Since the government 
would be forced to eventually accept them, 
no merchant with whom I dealt in Sorrento 
or Naples could quite bring himself to sac- 
rifice a sale which perhaps totaled several 
lire for the sake of discarding a few of the 



Money, the World Around 141 

centime pieces. In this way I turned to 
account my whole stock of 20-centime 
pieces and accepted no more unless they 
were of the bright, new coinage fresh from 
the mint that was busy turning out good 
coins to take the place of the old ones. 

In Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and 
France you reckon with the lire or franc 
— each worth twenty cents in United States 
money — as a basis; in Germany, Denmark, 
Norway and Sweden, it is the mark or 
crown, value about twenty-five cents; in 
Egypt and Turkey, the piastre, value five 
cents, is your standard of valuation; in 
Spain the peseta, value twenty cents; in 
Holland the florin, value forty cents. When 
you reach England, bear in mind that, 
whereas your American dollar was worth 
two in the native cash of the Far East, the 
reverse is true here concerning your shil- 
lings and pence. Otherwise you may over- 
estimate the purchasing power of your 
money and be somewhat surprised when the 
clerk in the London shop returns your 
change and you realize that the English 
shilling means the American quarter. 

Letters of credit through your home 
bank, or travelers' checks in denomina- 



142 Journeying Round the World 

tions of $50 or $25, issued by banks, inter- 
national express companies, tourist agen- 
cies or steamship lines are always available 
and are safe and convenient ways of carry- 
ing funds. 



Tips and Tipping. 

If you ask the average traveler what are 
the most prolific sources of annoyance en 
tour, I venture to say that nine out of 
every ten will reply, "Baggage and tips." 

The term "Tip," I understand, origin- 
ated from a custom of English waiters in 
cafes and restaurants who placed boxes at 
the entrance labeled "To Insure Prompt- 
ness," into which coins were dropped by 
patrons who wished to secure prompt at- 
tention — and were willing to pay extra for 
it. The initial letters of thi& significant 
phrase form the magic word. 

The protests that have arisen, long, loud 
and emphatic, from American tourists 
against the custom of tipping have resulted 
in the doing away with the custom entirely 
in at least one London hotel and I believe 
in several Parisian hostelries. Neverthe- 
less, this custom, introduced, it must be 
remembered, and fostered by the Amer- 
icans themselves, bids fair to die hard. At 
Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo the raft of at- 
tendants who always line up to speed the 

143 



144 Journeying Round the World 

parting guest have been dubbed the "Shep- 
heard's flock" by a humorous tourist. The 
morning we left, after a week's stay at 
this famous hostelry, we passed through a 
double lin e of expectant Arabs and Be- 
douins ranged on the piazza. Some of 
them we had never seen, and most of them 
had not rendered us the slightest service, 
but there they stood with eager, expectant 
faces, as relentless and stolid as the Pyra- 
mids themselves. 

In Jerusalem the problem of tips was 
solved in this wise: Posted on the door of 
your room was a printed notice to the effect 
that no tips were allowed in that hotel, as 
all the employees received fixed salaries 
and any one of them detected in the act of 
accepting a tip would be summarily dis- 
charged. Our spirits rose. Ah! Here in 
the Holy Land it seemed the tourist met 
with Christian consideration. The nui- 
sance of distributing piastres and pence 
right and left was done away with. 

But hold on! Read the notice a little 
farther: "Ten per cent of your hotel bill 
will be added to your account in lieu of 
tips." This was an ingenious way of keep- 
ing the fees in the hands of the proprietor. 



Tips and Tipping 145 

He wasn't a Yankee either, but a thrifty 
German. On our way down the Rhine to 
Cologne we stopped over night at a hotel 
in Mainz. We left by the first steamer next 
morning. I paused at the desk and asked 
the concierge for my bill. With a flourish 
he replied, "Your account is being made 
out this instant." 

One would have thought from the cere- 
mony that the bill of a few marks for a 
night's lodging and breakfast would be an 
itemized account involving expert book- 
keeping. After waiting so long that I 
feared I would miss the boat the concierge 
announced, "Your bill is ready, Madame," 
indicating with a wave of the hand some 
personage in my rear. I turned and beheld 
a dapper young fellow, gotten up in togs 
fit for a courtier. He held in his hand a 
big billhead, which he presented to me with 
a flourish. Stamped conspicuously in one 
corner, in large purple type, was the re- 
minder, "Tips are not included in this bill" 
— and the young man stood there with out- 
stretched hands. 

Outside was the porter standing guard 
over my suitcase; the head waiter held my 
umbrella which I had momentarily set 



146 Journeying Round the World 

down by the desk; the two "boots" were 
fighting for the possession of my type- 
writer case, and the "lift" boy was trying 
to relieve me of my hand bag, while the 
smiling concierge stood waiting to bid me 
a fond farewell. 

"I took a lady to the theatre," relates 
one tourist, ' ' and my tipping bill was some- 
thing like this — eleven tips in all, I believe. 
I tipped the boy who sprang to open the 
cab door, tipped cabby, tipped the head 
usher, gave two tips in the dressing rooms, 
tipped the girl usher who brought a foot- 
stool for the lady, tipped the boy who 
handed us programmes, tipped the waiter 
in the cafe after the theater and the boy 
who took our wraps, twice tipped the cabby 
who brought us home — once at the lady's 
hotel, and once at my own. All told, my 
tips exactly doubled the total cost of cab 
hire, theater tickets and supper. 

"At another hotel, where I had been a 
guest two weeks, I asked for my bill on my 
departure. The cashier smilingly informed 
me that it would be ready in half an hour, 
at the end of which time it was presented 
by a chap in livery, who handed me the 



Tips and Tipping 147 

document with a cordial 'And how do you 
do this morning'?' 

"I looked the fellow over, whom I had 
never laid eyes on before, and said, 'Who 
the deuce are you?' 

" 'I have charge of your floor, sir,' he 
replied expectantly and suavely. 

"I grasped his outstretched hand and 
shook it heartily. 'I'm delighted to meet 
you, sir,' I said; 'I've been in this hotel two 
weeks and this is the first time I've seen 
you.' That was all he got out of me." 

At a little Italian town on Lake Como 
where we staid over Sunda}^ I happened 
to find on the register of the hotel the 
names of some acquaintances and asked 
the concierge if they were still guests of 
the house. 

"No'm, they left yesterday," he replied, 
and added mournfully, "They said nothing 
— they left nothing," and I observed a 
cross opposite the names on the register, 
placed there I suppose as a warning and a 
reminder, in case those particular travelers 
ever again registered at that particular 
hotel, that no douceurs might be expected. 

A lady in London told me that she had 
refused invitations to private English 



148 Journeying Round the World 

country houses because she could not 
afford the expense involved in the tips 
expected by the servants. To such an ex- 
tent has this nuisance grown that in some 
private houses where large house parties 
are entertained, the host posts notices beg- 
ging his guests not to tip the servants, as 
it is a reflection on his hospitality. Never- 
theless, the haughty English servant 
makes a visitor feel so uncomfortable un- 
less the expected tip is forthcoming for 
the slightest service, that the guest does 
not feel at liberty to ignore it, and the tips 
usually involve pounds, instead of shillings 
and sixpences, in these houses, too, the but- 
ler and coachman regarding anything less 
than a sovereign beneath their notice. 

A table steward on one of the big ocean 
liners did not hesitate to inform a clergy- 
man who tendered him a tip of five dollars 
for himself, wife and young son on a short 
voyage, that they were accustomed to receive 
more than that, and his air of hauteur was 
chilling enough to freeze the marrow in your 
bones. The deck steward on this same 
ship confided to a passenger that he usually 
got $175 in tips on a passage. Since this 
particular ship makes two trips per month, 



Tips and Tipping 149 

this steward receives a fairly decent sal- 
ary of $350 per month in tips alone. It is 
said that in the large European hotels the 
concierge pays the proprietor a handsome 
sum for the privilege of his position, receiv- 
ing no salary whatever from the manage- 
ment, and depending solely on his tips for 
his maintenance. 

A guide for a certain tourist agency told 
me that he had purchased a country home 
for himself, and was in sufficiently affluent 
circumstances to retire if he chose, and yet 
his salary was but £2 10s a week, and he 
had never received more than that, and 
usually less, and had a family consisting of 
a wife and three children to support. 
"Just fawncy" acquiring independence 
and affluence on a salary of $12.50 per 
week! Yet this man had accomplished it, 
and in a surprisingly short time. Doubt- 
less the tips were responsible for that 
country place. 

However, be not discouraged, prospec- 
tive traveler, for it is but justice to record 
that tips in foreign countries mean usually 
coins of small denominations. For a few 
centimes, amounting to three cents in 
United States money, willing porters will 



150 Journeying Round the World 

carry your suitcase from train to omnibus; 
"boots" and the "lift" boy do not expect 
big tips, and carriage hire, as compared 
with American charges, is a mere bagatelle. 
In Rome our party of five secured an excel- 
lent guide for twelve francs per day, and a 
carriage cost us eighteen francs per day, 
which made our per capita expenditure but 
$1.20 per day, including guide, carriage and 
tips. We were driven all about Rome, visit- 
ing its famous places, out the Appian Way 
to the Catacombs, and our guide was an in- 
telligent, educated and refined young man 
who spoke English fluently — and five other 
languages. He knew his Rome perfectly and 
drilled us on dates, early and late Roman 
history, art and artists, like a professor of 
ancient and modern literature. 

It was in Japan — and only Japan — that 
we experienced the curious sensation of 
having our tips refused. It was on a rail- 
way train going up to Mkko from Tokyo. 
Just before arrival, the railway official who 
had acted as conductor entered our com- 
partment, whisk broom in hand, and pro- 
ceeded to "polish us off" after the manner 
of the American porter. When the oper- 
ation was over and we tendered a tip, what 



Tips and Tipping 151 

was our amazement to see a look of dire 
distress on the face of the polite official 
who vigorously refused to accept the coins. 



Foreign Food. 

One of the penalties of the privilege of 
travel is the strange food you encounter, 
especially in the Orient. You will be cau- 
tioned by experienced globe trotters, before 
you leave, not to indulge in salads or any 
uncooked vegetables that grow above- 
ground in the Far East, as the methods of 
irrigation and soil cultivation over there are 
not strictly sanitary from the American 
viewpoint 

Although in practically every great Ori- 
ental city that we visited we found splendid 
hotels where the food was excellent, yet the 
foreigner must exercise certain precautions. 
In Nanking about the only palatable food 
offered us was the rice. You are always sure 
of rice in China — and well-cooked rice, too 
— for the Chinaman knows how to prepare 
his standard dish much better than the 
American chef. Every kernel of rice stands 
up for itself individually — fluffy and distinct 
as a kernel of popped corn. If you can eat 
curry, so much the better, for rice and curry 
is the national dish of China. 

152 



Foreign Food 153 

Then there are eggs ! I never saw so many 
eggs as in Japan and China. At every river 
station where our steamer stopped on the 
Yangtze, quantities of eggs — in boxes, buc- 
kets, pails and bales — were brought on 
board. You will find chicken, or "poulet," 
— which is the same thing — on practically 
every menu card from San Francisco to New 
York. Bamboo sprouts are Oriental deli- 
cacies, and "capon a la financiere" was a 
dish with a significant name offered on the 
menu card of a Yokohama hotel. 

You will of necessity, acquire the tea- 
drinking habit in the Far East, because it 
is safer than cold water with its lurking 
possibility of germs. If you are a coffee 
connoisseur, then prepare to abolish the cof- 
fee-drinking habit from the time you touch 
Oriental soil till you land in Switzerland, 
Germany or France. It's astonishing how 
quickly one can break away from a life-long 
habit under certain circumstances. Hither- 
to, I had been dependent on my cup of cof- 
fee for breakfast as a morning appetizer, but 
after struggling in vain to swallow the slop- 
py mess offered under that name in foreign 
countries, I abandoned the attempt and for 
three months never tasted my accustomed 



154 Journeying Round the World 

morning beverage, substituting tea or cocoa. 
Whereas I had thought it a sure forerunner 
of headache to be deprived of my favorite 
drink at home, I found that no disagreeable 
results followed my abstemiousness abroad. 
All of which furnishes an excellent argu- 
ment for the advocates of temperance from 
all stimulants. 

In Cairo you will find butter and cheese, 
"fromage et beurre" as it appears on the 
menu card, relegated to dessert, and be not 
alarmed, neither seek too literal a transla- 
tion, if you see "Poulet grille a la Diable," 
in the list of eatables with a French name 
placed before you. 

In Europe you get the ''Continental 
breakfast" — which means coffee or cocoa, 
rolls and fruit — nothing more — unless you 
pay extra for it, but you may always order 
eggs, omelettes or other dishes if desired, 
aside from that offered as the regular break- 
fast. If you are fond of unsalted butter, 
then the European article offered for your 
consumption will meet your approval — 
otherwise you may relieve its freshness with 
a dextrous flirt of the salt shaker. Dr. Bur- 
dette says that if one has mastered the 
continental breakfast and fresh butter he 



Foreign Food 155 

will pass for a finished European traveler. 
Milk chocolate is the great American food 
on the European continent. Every tourist 
has an ample supply in his pocket. I actu- 
ally believe that tons of chocolate are con- 
sumed every year by American travelers. 
The annual production of a single Swiss 
manufacturer is 250,000,000 tablets. The 
chocolate shops, and there is one in every 
block of every city, village, hamlet or way 
station, do a tremendous business. I count- 
ed no less than twenty brands of chocolate 
at a single shop in a little Swiss village, and 
the proprietor told me that she sold pounds 
of it every day. The chocolate habit in 
Europe is more prevalent than the gum 
chewing crime in America. Pure milk 
chocolate is surely an ideal food for travel- 
ers. It requires no preparation, and one 
can comfortably subsist on it longer than 
upon any other food as easily and cheaply 
obtained. I met a couple traveling with 
their two-year-old son, and the mother told 
me that the child's sole subsistence was milk 
chocolate, and he thrived wonderfully on the 
diet. "I simply give him all he wants at 
regular intervals/' she said, "and he never 
tires of it." 



156 Journeying Round the World 

The little French patisseries or tea rooms 
with which Paris abounds are a constant 
temptation to your appetite, with the dainty 
cakes and pastries and cups of delicious 
chocolate or coffee. The automat is the 
European idea of the American cafeteria. 
I met it first in Munich and afterward in 
Nuremburg, and I was told that the automat 
is very popular all through Germany. The 
food is ranged on counters in glass-covered 
receptacles. If you want a sandwich, a piece 
of cake or pie, you slip a coin representing 
the price, which is posted above each dish, 
into the slot, and immediately that plate of 
sandwiches, pies or cake, begins to slowly 
revolve and your particular portion slides 
automatically through the opening onto the 
plate waiting to receive it. After you have 
secured what you desire in solid foods, you 
approach the " beverage fountain," put the 
price in the slot, and your cup under the 
faucet and the tea, coffee or cocoa — which- 
ever faucet you choose — begins to flow. As 
the liquid nears the top of your cup you 
fairly hold your breath for fear it will over- 
flow, but no, it always stops automatically 
just half an inch from the brim of the cup. 



Foreign Food 157 

It it very interesting to watch the automat 
work. 

You will be genuinely convinced that you 
have never tasted real weiners until you 
have patronized the famous Bratwurst 
Glocklein in Nuremberg. It is today pre- 
cisely as it was a century or more ago — a 
little " lean-to" against the side of a fam- 
ous church. Not more than twenty-five or 
thirty people can crowd around the three 
tables within the little building, in one end 
of which is the huge range where, on the bed 
of glowing coals, you can see the weiners 
cooked to order. Notwithstanding the 
cramped quarters, it often happens that a 
thousand people dine here in a day. In 
pleasant weather tables are spread outside 
the building for the accommodation of the 
overflow. 

"What else can you give us?" I heard a 
Boston man inquire as he drained his third 
glass of German beer and devoured the last 
crumb of his hot sausages, "Nothing but 
wurst and kraut, eh 1 ?" 

"Yes, sir, we can give you some more 
kraut and wurst," replied the waiter, and 
the order was promptly duplicated by the 
hungry Bostonian. 



1 58 Journeying Round the World 

In Grindelwald, we were entertained at 
a delightful old Swiss chalet half a century 
old, and drank our cocoa, and ate honey 
fresh from the hives in the garden below, 
from a breakfast table spread on the upper 
balcony of the chalet, overlooking the valley 
of the Jungfrau. 

We reached Lucerne on the Fourth of 
July and the dinner card at our hotel an- 
nounced for dessert, ' ' gateau de Taf t. ' ' The 
dining room was filled with American guests 
and when this " piece de resistance" ap- 
peared a shout of applause went up. The 
Presidential cake was decorated with an 
imitation of a log cabin, very successfully 
done in candy logs, and topped by a tiny 
American flag, all of which accentuated the 
fact that the common idea of Europeans is 
that our presidents must of necessity -be 
born in log cabins. 



Types of Travelers. 

After all, though you travel the wide 
world over, there is no more interesting 
study than human nature itself — the same 
old human nature that prevails everywhere 
among the sons and daughters of Adam, be 
they black or white, English, Japanese, Chi- 
nese, German, French or any other nation- 
ality. You meet people who show such an 
utter lack of appreciation that you wonder 
why they travel. In the great art galleries 
of Europe you hear expressions showing 
such hopeless ignorance that your rapture 
over the world's masterpieces is momentar- 
ily eclipsed by the absurdity and ludicrous- 
ness of the comments. 

" Just look at them Cupids!" exclaimed a 
woman as she pointed at the exquisite 
cherubs chiseled from marble in St. Peter's 
at Rome. 

"That there statue has lost its head," 
observed another art critic leveling a finger 
at the "Winged Victory." 

"Yes, an' here's another got its arms 
broke off," responded her companion as she 

159 



1 60 Journeying Round the World 

paused beside the Venus de Milo. "They 
must have awful careless janitors over 
here." 

"This is a copy of 'The Holy Family,' " 
explained the guide, as he halted before a 
masterpiece. 

"He says that's a picture of ; The Whole 
Family,' " murmured a man to his compan- 
ion. "Whose family does he mean, I won- 
guide fairly gasped and then recovered him- 
Family' ever since we've been in Rome. 
I'm gong to ask him. Guide, what do you 
mean by 'The Whole Family"?" he called 
out. "Whose family is it anyhow?" 

There was an awful pause in the group of 
tourists and Peggy actually giggled. The 
guide fairly gasped and then recovered him- 
self sufficiently to explain, "Why, sir, the 
Holy Family — Joseph and Mary and the 
child Jesus." 

After a minute the idea percolated 
through the gray matter of the tourist's 
brain and he remarked sotto voce to his com- 
panion, "Oh, I see! He says 'The Holy 
Family' — 'H-o-l-l-y,' you know." 

This was almost as bad as the man who 
asked why it was that the Madonna was 
always represented with a child in her arms. 



Types of Travelers 161 

We were listening with awe and delight 
to the wonderful musical door in one of the 
cathedrals. As the soft, aeolian tones made 
sweetest melody while the monk in charge 
solemnly swung the door back and forth and 
the guide was explaining to us the mys- 
terious mechanism of the door, I overheard 
a tourist who had just come up, remark in 
annoyed tones: 

"If I only had a can of oil, I could stop 
the squeaking of that confounded door. 
Why don't they keep things up better over 
here, anyway?" 

The throngs of copyists in the picture gal- 
leries of Rome and Florence and other Euro- 
pean art centers are a study in themselves 
— old, bent, white-haired men, attractive or 
plain-featured young women, wild-bearded 
artists and pale-faced geniuses sit or stand 
before their easels copying the work of the 
great masters. In the Pitti gallery in Flor- 
ence there seemed to be a perfect craze for 
copying on a single large canvas — not one 
picture but the complete salon, or as much 
of it as can be seen from a given point — a 
corner and the two walls leading from it, 
including the frescoed ceiling. In one of the 
salons where this view gave some of the 



162 Journeying Round the World 

most famous paintings, I paused before the 
easel of a young man who was just putting 
the finishing touches to such a picture. It 
was a magnificent piece of work, the colors 
true, and the reproduction, which included 
a splendid piece of sculpture by a master 
hand, almost perfectly done. I admired the 
painting and asked the price. He was an 
Italian artist and spoke no English but sum- 
moned an American fellow worker who 
acted as interpreter and who said the price 
was 500 lire ($100). He had been three 
months constantly at work on the canvas. 
At this rate his daily wage would amount 
to less than that of the humblest day laborer 
with pick and shovel in America. 

It was a Chicago man who, when told that 
six centuries were consumed in the building 
of the great cathedral at Cologne, ex- 
claimed, "Is it possible? We could build it 
in Chicago in six months." 

"There's only a few pictures that 
daughter and I care to see, anyhow," said 
a Missouri woman in the Pitti gallery. "I've 
come to the conclusion that most of the art 
galleries in Yurrup are alike. You've seen 
one and you've seen 'em all. The only dif- 
ference is that some of 'em have the Old 



Types of Travelers 163 

Masters' paintings in 'em and others have 
just copies and the first are the best. I want 
to see Titian's 'Baby Stuart' here. That's 
what I come to this gallery for. Daughter 
and I both paint — I in oils and she in pastel 
— and the walls of our home in Missouri are 
just covered with our pictures, and I must 
say I'd give more for 'em than for all there 
is here" — with a sweeping gesture that in- 
cluded Raphael's "Madonna," Andrea del 
Sarto's "Saint John the Baptist" and about 
a dozen other masterpieces, before which 
artists of all the ages since have knelt in 
wonder and admiration. 

Americans cannot fail to be impressed 
with the air of leisurely dignity which is 
characteristic of the natives of the Far East 
which makes our American scramble seem 
most undignified, unbecoming, and even 
rude. This unseemly haste pervades our 
very speech. When in Germany we had 
reached a town where quite unexpectedly 
we were required to change cars, and I 
sought some one who understood English in 
order to get the necessary information. I 
was directed to a young man who was said 
to speak English, and I approached him and 
fluently made my wants and wishes known, 



164 Journeying Round the World 

speaking at a rather rapid rate. He regard- 
ed me curiously, listened attentively to my 
flow of eloquence, while gradually a puzzled 
expression stole over his features, and 
finally he said in his slow, German way: 

" Pardon me, Madame, but could you 
speak English'? I do not understand your 
language. " 

It was too rapid to be recognized. 

A young German girl who was slowly 
acquiring the English language listened 
with awe and admiration to the gay con- 
versation of a party of young Americans, 
one of whom remarked concerning her com- 
panion, u Qh, she's not the only pebble on 
the beach." 

The German girl pondered over this 
phrase — for the American slang caught her 
admiration and this was quite the latest she 
had heard of this strange and fascinating 
dialect. Then she announced to her startled 
mother: 

"I've got it — this delightful American 
slang. Here's the latest: 'She's not the 
only peoples on the bench'," and the two 
shrieked with laughter and delight. 

In Palestine I met an old lady more than 
seventy years of age who was traveling with 



Types of Travelers 165 

a personally conducted party, and she in- 
formed me in a burst of confidence that she 
had brought along an extra set of false teeth 
for fear she might break the ones she wore. 
On the other hand she had forgotten her 
watch. 

One of the happiest, most cheerful people 
I saw in all my journey round was a para- 
lyzed Englishman who couldn't walk a step 
and was carried down to the dining saloon 
for each meal by his valet and one of the 
stewards. He and his chum, an English 
earl, cracked jokes and dispensed fun all day 
long until their particular corner of the deck 
became famous for its good cheer and the 
hearty peals of laughter that continually 
emanated from it. 

Then there was the Grumbler — a man 
worth a million, but so stingy that he was 
in a constant state of perturbation lest he 
be fleeced. He antagonized every hotel 
keeper from Shanghai to London from the 
minute he entered the hostelry and began 
to jew down the rates; he called everything 
" graft" from the tiny tip he grudgingly 
gaVe his steward to the hard-earned yen he 
grumblingly paid his guide, and the few sen 
he doled out to his 'riksha man who had 



1 66 Journeying Around the World 

toted him all over Tokyo for hours. He ban- 
tered and dickered for everything and was 
an object of ridicule and contempt the world 
around on account of his parsimony. 

In London I met a tourist from Detroit 
who gravely assured me that he was not 
attempting to do anything in the way of 
sightseeing in this greatest city on earth 
except by way of the underground railways. 
I gazed at him in amazement and inquired 
if he were particularly interested in subway 
construction and was on a tour of investiga- 
tion, or if he had visited London so often 
that he was perfectly familiar with it. 

' ' No — neither, ' ' he replied soberly. ' ' This 
is my first visit to London and I am merely 
on a sightseeing trip, but it's so big and sort 
of confusing that I've decided to leave the 
surface till next time and do the under- 
ground thoroughly — going from the bottom 
up, as it were," and he proceeded to show 
me a map of the tube railways of the city. 
"You see, I have become quite expert in 
finding my way about in these subways, ' ' he 
confided with an air of modest pride as he 
pointed out the stations and different lines 
of underground roads. "It is far less nerve- 
racking than to keep above ground," he 



Types of Travelers 167 

went on. "Oh, yes, I occasionally come up 
to the surface at some interesting point. 
I visited Westminster Abbey yesterday. I 
simply went underground at Russell Square 
you see, changed cars twice in the subway 
and emerged at the Parliament Building 
right opposite the Abbey; escaped the con- 
fusion of these left-handed omnibuses, 
motors and trams, and arrived at my des- 
tination quite simply as it were. Another 
advantage in underground travel," he con- 
tinued, "is that you escape the annoyance 
of rain. Now we had a sudden shower yes- 
terday, and many pedestrians on the sur- 
face were caught unawares without umbrel- 
las. I was underground, safe and snug, and 
knew nothing of the storm till I came to the 
surface and found the streets soaking." 



Homeward Bound. 

Homeward bound at last, after months of 
travel in foreign lands, and as your ship 
slips her anchor and swings away from the 
wharf, heading out to sea toward "the home 
of the brave and the land of the free," your 
heart sings in rapture. Glad to come home % 
Why, half the joy of this journey round the 
world is in the getting home again. You 
observe that practically all the passengers 
are in a state of mental review of their for- 
eign experiences. It's the first opportunity 
they've had to sit quietly down and sum up 
the trip. Whereas all conversation on your 
outward-bound trip was in the future tense, 
now it is in the past. Notes are compared, 
and everyone has time to mentally digest 
and assimilate the incidents of travel. 

About the fourth day out from Liverpool, 
the peaceful mental meditations of passen- 
gers are somewhat disturbed and brought 
abruptly to a focus by the sudden realiza- 
tion that there is yet another strange expe- 
rience to be reckoned with. You find in 
your cabin, in a conspicuous place, a 

168 



Homeward Bound 169 

declaration blank on which you are 
requested to file a list of your purchases 
abroad. A quiver of suppressed excitement 
runs like an electric thrill among the pas- 
sengers, especially the female contingent. 
Cabin doors that had hitherto swung open 
in frank and unconcealed candor, suddenly 
become exclusively closed. There are whis- 
pered conferences among women, myste- 
rious nods and interrogative queries. After 
a little you observe that all the desks in the 
writing room are appropriated and long lists 
of goods and chattels acquired abroad are 
being checked up by anxious-faced women. 
The declaration is a straight up-and-down 
document. Uncle Sam asks you to defin- 
itely declare what goods you have acquired 
abroad, whether by purchase or gift, 
whether in your baggage, on your person, 
used or unused, and you are warned that 
you will be required to swear before a no- 
tary on your arrival that you have made an 
honest and truthful declaration, and you are 
further admonished in a foot-note that, in 
case you are detected in untruthful state- 
ments, you will be liable to arrest and im- 
prisonment. In short, you are reduced to 
the extremity of telling the exact truth, 



1 70 Journeying Around the World 

"the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth/' or its opposite, and thereby brand- 
ing yourself as a liar and laying up a heap 
of trouble. 

The girl who had planned to land in New 
York wearing two Paris silk petticoats, a 
new London suit, a pair of long white kid 
gloves, a sweeping ostrich plume pinned on 
her United States hat, a Florentine mosaic 
bracelet on her arm, a string of Roman 
pearls with a Jerusalem mother-of-pearl 
pendant and a dog-collar of Naples corals 
around her neck, suddenly abandoned the 
idea. "What's the use?" she said, "if I've 
got to declare everything I have on I might 
as well pack 'em. ' ' 

Wise lady! I warn you, don't try to cheat 
Uncle Sam. If you do there 's trouble ahead. 
Pack all your foreign purchases as far as 
possible in the tray of your trunk. On the 
declaration blank, do not attempt to make 
out an itemized list of every article, but sum 
up under a heading "Personal Effects" the 
amount you have expended for such things 
as wearing apparel. Under "Souvenirs" 
place the amount represented by these pur- 
chases; under "Books and Pictures" that 
spent for these, etc. It is well, however, to 



Homeward Bound 1 7 1 

make out on a separate slip for your per- 
sonal use, and to submit to the customs offi- 
cer if requested, an itemized list, together 
with the price you paid for each article. 
You are entitled to one hundred dollars' 
worth, duty free. After you have filled in 
your declaration blank, return it to the 
steward who will tear off the coupon with 
corresponding number and return to you. 
When you land, present the coupon at the 
inspector's window, who will, by comparing 
the number, find your declaration blank 
which has been turned over to him by the 
ship's purser, and you will take oath that 
the signature is yours. He will detail an offi- 
cer to examine your baggage and he will 
accompany you to the place where your 
effects have been placed. If you've been 
perfectly frank and honest in your declara- 
tion, you have nothing to fear and will find 
the officer courteous and obliging — at least, 
I did. 

It was just at the close of a perfect 
autumn day that our good ship Arabic 
passed into New York harbor, her decks 
crowded with eager faces scanning the fa- 
miliar shores, the sky-scrapers looming up 
in the distance like huge honeycombs set on 



1 72 Journeying Around the World 

end. As our ship passed the Statue of Lib- 
erty, burnished with the last rays of the 
setting sun, there broke from the lips of the 
passengers that glorious song of life and lib- 
erty, "The Star Spangled Banner," and 
tears sprang to happy eyes which looked 
for the first time in many months upon their 
native land. 

Japan has her pretty, pink-cheeked maid- 
ens, Hongkong her lovely flowers, Singa- 
pore her luxuriant growth of tropic trees 
and vegetation, Egypt her fertile fields of 
the Nile, Palestine her orange and olive 
groves, Italy her sunny skies and smiling 
vineyards, Switzerland her lofty mountain 
peaks, Germany her castled Rhine, Paris 
her wide boulevards and fascinating shops, 
England her enchanting reaches of country 
side — but mine own, my native land, thou 
hast them all — and more. 



SEP 27 1912 




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